Re: [EuroHaCk] Linux 2.2.x ISN vulnerability (fwd)

From: Sebastian (scutat_private-BERLIN.DE)
Date: Tue Sep 28 1999 - 12:56:43 PDT

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    Hi.
    
    On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Jeremy Buhler wrote:
    
    > > A weakness within the TCP stack in Linux 2.2.x kernels
    > > has been discovered. The vulnerability makes it possible
    > > to "blind-spoof" TCP connections.
    
    > This vulnerability is fixed in kernels 2.2.13pre13 and
    > later.  Hopefully 2.2.13 will be released shortly and/or
    > the relevant patch from pre13 will be released as an
    > erratum versus 2.2.12.  Alan?
    
    A lot of people wrote to us and said that the typo where &secret[3] was
    meant but &secret+3 was written within the kernel code was the cause for
    this bug.
    
    In our tests, however, we applied nothing but this one-line patch and we
    still experienced small-difference ISN's (stealth tested this, but I
    believe in his skills :-).
    
    I rather think that changing only a few bits as hash input for the MD4
    hash routine is the reason for the weak hash result. Even if the whole
    secret rest is zero'd out, a strong hash algorithm should make this up and
    create a totally different hash value. As said in (if I remember
    correctly) Applied Cryptography every input bit within the hash input
    should be able to modify every bit in the hash output value, which is here
    obviously not the case.
    
    However, simply using a strong PRNG (as I naivly suggested a few days ago)
    is not a solution, as Alan pointed out, there are strict rules for TCP
    sequence numbers to avoid data corruption.
    
    ciao,
    scut / teso security
    [http://teso.scene.at/]
    
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