ICMP fragmentation required but DF set problems.

[antirez <antirez () invece org>]

Hi all,

The problem I'm exposing is quite obvious, but unfortunatelly
can be used in a very simple way by script kiddies.

SYNOPSIS

  It's possible to slowdown (a lot) connections between two
  arbirary hosts (but at least one with the PMTU discovery enabled)
  using some spoofed TCP/IP packet. Maybe you can do more
  against some TCP/IP stack.

AFFECTED SYSTEMS

  I tryed it a bit against some site, seems that at least Linux
  and some BSD are vulnerable. Anyway it is quite probable
  that almost all the TCP/IP stacks with the PMTU discovery
  enabled are vulnerable.

SOLUTION

  There isn't a clear solution.

CREDITS (!)

  me <antirez () invece org>

DETAILS (When I talk about "the stack" I'm refering to Linux 2.4 TCP/IP stack)

  The path MTU discovery is used to optimize TCP/IP performances.
  Sorry if you don't know how it works, no flood for readers.
  Anyway the stack takes an hash table with the MTU of other ends. When
  an ICMP frag-req but DF set reaches the stack it perform a look-up
  in the hash table, searching for the old MTU, than look at the
  size of the quoted packet in the ICMP packet, and compute the new MTU
  (strong semplification). The look-up is done using even the TOS
  field, since different TOS may have different routing (I guess is for this).

  The players:

  A - some host that talks or will talk with the host B
  B - some host that talks or will talk with the host A
  C - the attacker, able to spoof IP packets

  C: sends an ICMP echo request, with some data, the source
     address set to A and the dest address set to B.
  B: creates a new entry in the hash table, if there isn't an old.
  C: sends an ICMP fragmentation needed but DF set, with the source
     address set to A and the dest address set to B,
     quoting the ICMP echo-reply response that we can guess (set the
     right TOS (usually 0x40) if you want that this works).
  B: set the new MTU in relation to the quoted packet total len.

  You may want to send this packets once every second, just to
  avoid expires. Also This may be useful if the MSS TCP option override
  the MTU (it shouldn't, but some implementations may do this),
  otherwise you can send even less spoofed packets.

  Note that shouldn't be useful to quote a packet that was really
  sent in this scenario.

EXPLOIT

  Please, write the exploit just to confirm this, don't ship
  it to lame people. I want not to release my proof-of-concepts
  code.

  That's all, can someone confirm this?

regards,
antirez

--
Salvatore Sanfilippo              |                      <antirez () invece org>
http://www.kyuzz.org/antirez      |      PGP: finger antirez () tella alicom com