Re: [fw-wiz] CERT vulnerability note VU# 539363 (fwd)

From: Miles Sabin (milesat_private)
Date: Thu Oct 17 2002 - 23:45:26 PDT

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    Mike Frantzen wrote,
    > The problem with a hashed state table is that hash tables are very
    > easy to attack.  The use of collision chains (linked lists) would let
    > an attack totally blow out the D$ and TLB.  I've make a sun U10
    > 440mhz w/ 2MB L2 grind to a halt w/ 5 packets a second after a long
    > series of collisions.
    
    Interesting ... the idea being that with knowledge of the hash function 
    an attacker could manufacture enough collisions to push the hash table 
    to the O(n) worst case?
    
    Couldn't that attack be frustrated by a more sophisticated hash function 
    parameterized with a local secret (ie. the attacker would need to know 
    the secret as well as the function before they could reliably generate 
    collisions)? Or would that make the hash function too computationally 
    expensive?
    
    Cheers,
    
    
    Miles
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