Re: Borderware predictable initial TCP

From: Roy Hills (Roy.Hills@NTA-MONITOR.COM)
Date: Thu Sep 03 1998 - 01:49:55 PDT

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    While NT 4 SP3 does have a pattern to it's initial TCP sequence
    numbers, my observations show this to be a "one-per-millisecond"
    seqence which is much less of a problem than the "64k increments"
    pattern exhibited by Borderware and HP-UX 10.x default configurations.
    
    With the "64k increments" pattern, the server's initial TCP sequence
    number is increased by 64,000 for each incoming connection and by
    128,000 each second.  These granularities of inbound connections and
    seconds are sufficiently course to make sequence number prediction
    trivial.
    
    By contrast, the "one-per-millisecond" sequence shown by NT 4 SP3
    increases the initial TCP sequence number by one every millisecond.
    I think that this would be very difficult to exploit remotely because the
    latency variations over an Internet connection are generally much greater
    than a millisecond.  I guess that it may be possible to exploit over a LAN
    connection, but even then, I doubt that it would be easy.
    
    Has anyone actually seen or demonstrated a successful spoofing
    attack against NT 4 SP3 over an Internet connection?
    
    Roy Hills
    NTA Monitor
    
    At 22:14 02/09/98 +0200, Ulf Munkedal wrote:
    >This also applies to Firewall-1 on a Windows NT SP3. Vendor has been
    >notified some time ago.
    >
    >Like with HP-UX this is an NT problem, but one could argue that firewall
    >vendors should replace/strengthen the TCP/IP stack on that platform since
    >MS hasn't solved TCP seq prediction on NT and it has been known for quite
    >some time. SP3 helps but it doesn't solve the problem.
    >
    >Ulf
    
    --
    Roy Hills                                    Tel:   01634 721855
    NTA Monitor Ltd                              FAX:   01634 721844
    6 Beaufort Court, Medway City Estate,        Email: Roy.Hills@nta-monitor.com
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