resource exhaustion attacks.
For network link optimization TCP can adjust its MSS and thus
packet size according to the observed path MTU. This is done
dynamically based on feedback from the remote host and network
components along the packet path. This information can be
abused to pretend an extremely low path MTU.
The resource exhaustion works in two ways:
o during tcp connection setup the advertized local MSS is
exchanged between the endpoints. The remote endpoint can
set this arbitrarily low (except for a minimum MTU of 64
octets enforced in the BSD code). When the local host is
sending data it is forced to send many small IP packets
instead of a large one.
For example instead of the normal TCP payload size of 1448
it forces TCP payload size of 12 (MTU 64) and thus we have
a 120 times increase in workload and packets. On fast links
this quickly saturates the local CPU and may also hit pps
processing limites of network components along the path.
This type of attack is particularly effective for servers
where the attacker can download large files (WWW and FTP).
We mitigate it by enforcing a minimum MTU settable by sysctl
net.inet.tcp.minmss defaulting to 256 octets.
o the local host is reveiving data on a TCP connection from
the remote host. The local host has no control over the
packet size the remote host is sending. The remote host
may chose to do what is described in the first attack and
send the data in packets with an TCP payload of at least
one byte. For each packet the tcp_input() function will
be entered, the packet is processed and a sowakeup() is
signalled to the connected process.
For example an attack with 2 Mbit/s gives 4716 packets per
second and the same amount of sowakeup()s to the process
(and context switches).
This type of attack is particularly effective for servers
where the attacker can upload large amounts of data.
Normally this is the case with WWW server where large POSTs
can be made.
We mitigate this by calculating the average MSS payload per
second. If it goes below 'net.inet.tcp.minmss' and the pps
rate is above 'net.inet.tcp.minmssoverload' defaulting to
1000 this particular TCP connection is resetted and dropped.
MITRE CVE: CAN-2004-0002
Reviewed by: sam (mentor)
MFC after: 1 day
reserved and now allocated TCP flags in incoming packets. This patch
stops overloading those bits in the IP firewall rules, and moves
colliding flags to a seperate field, ipflg. The IPFW userland
management tool, ipfw(8), is updated to reflect this change. New TCP
flags related to ECN are now included in tcp.h for reference, although
we don't currently implement TCP+ECN.
o To use this fix without completely rebuilding, it is sufficient to copy
ip_fw.h and tcp.h into your appropriate include directory, then rebuild
the ipfw kernel module, and ipfw tool, and install both. Note that a
mismatch between module and userland tool will result in incorrect
installation of firewall rules that may have unexpected effects. This
is an MFC candidate, following shakedown. This bug does not appear
to affect ipfilter.
Reviewed by: security-officer, billf
Reported by: Aragon Gouveia <aragon@phat.za.net>
better recovery for multiple packet losses in a single window.
The algorithm can be toggled via the sysctl net.inet.tcp.newreno,
which defaults to "on".
Submitted by: Jayanth Vijayaraghavan <jayanth@yahoo-inc.com>
mismatches exposed by this (the prototype for tcp_respond() didn't
match the function definition lexically, and still depends on a
gcc feature to match if ints have more than 32 bits).
or unsigned int (this doesn't change the struct layout, size or
alignment in any of the files changed in this commit, at least for
gcc on i386's. Using bitfields of type u_char may affect size and
alignment but not packing)).
This will make a number of things easier in the future, as well as (finally!)
avoiding the Id-smashing problem which has plagued developers for so long.
Boy, I'm glad we're not using sup anymore. This update would have been
insane otherwise.
