Re: TCP-RST Vulnerability - Doubt

From: Andre Tomt
Date: Fri Jun 25 2004 - 21:28:04 EST


David S. Miller wrote:
Could you kindly share your views regarding what Linux has done to its stack to overcome this vulnerability as it will be of great help to my research.


We have done nothing, and there are no plans to implement any workaround
for this problem.

RFC2385 MD5 hashing support is going in soon, and for the application where
the vulnerability actually matters (BGP sessions between backbone routers)
MD5 clears that problem right up and they're all using MD5 protection already
anyways.

Now you got me curious :-)

I have not seen anything conclusive on this yet. How sensitive is Linux to the attack? Some say it deals with it better than others did before they got "fixed", but with no hard evidence or a sensible explanation.

Lets assume you're on a FastEthernet pipe capable of delivering 144kpps. How "hard" would it be to exploit it in such a scenario, given we know the source port and approximate system time used on one of the ends?

Sure, on a FastEthernet your pipe is toast if someone really wants your arse anyway, but you don't want connections over other pipes, or internally, to die during such an attack.

--
Cheers,
André Tomt
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