Re: Yahoo Messenger Stale Sessions

From: BANIER Jeremie (jeremie.banierat_private)
Date: Thu Nov 14 2002 - 05:49:51 PST

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    Hello,
    I believe switching on keep-alive would perhaps sove that one ...
    
    <knip>
    Windows 2000 TCP keep-alive behavior can be modified by changing the values of the KeepAliveTime and KeepAliveInterval registry
    entries (HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters). TCP keep-alives can be sent once for every interval specified by
    the value of KeepAliveTime (defaults to 7,200,000 milliseconds, or two hours) if no other data or higher level keep-alives have
    been
    carried over the TCP connection. If there is no response to a keep-alive, it is repeated once every interval specified by the value
    of KeepAliveInterval in seconds. By default, the KeepAliveInterval entry is set to a value of one second.
    </knip>
    
    Hope it helps, if not rebooot ;-)
    Jeremie
    
    Tat Wee Kan wrote:
    
    > ----- Original Message -----
    > From: <Leonard.Ongat_private>
    > To: <security-basicsat_private>; <incidentsat_private>;
    > <bugtraqat_private>
    > Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 11:04 AM
    > Subject: Yahoo Messenger Stale Sessions
    >
    > > During my observation in daily use of Yahoo Messenger, my computer has
    > "stale/zombie" sessions.  For example, If i have received/message a friend,
    > yahoo will normally make a direct connection from my PC to my friend.  From
    > Netstat result, you can see a high port on my computer is having an
    > Established session with my peer's:5101 port.
    > >
    > > The issue is, after a contact has gone offline (dial-up), the state
    > established in the netstat will remain until the next day.  I wouls see this
    > as a vulnerabilities, since an arbitrary user can assume the IP Address was
    > used (dial-up->dynamic ip assignment), and use this established session to
    > assume it.
    > >
    > > Any idea ?
    >
    > Hmm, I'm not an expert in this, but I do realize if the 4-way handshake for
    > terminating a connection is not done properly, e.g. the user switched off
    > his dial-up modem abruptly, it would cause the "stale/zombie" sessions
    > described as above. The dial-up machine will not have the opportunity to
    > send the FIN to your machine.
    >
    > You probably need to know the sequence number, source port, destination port
    > as well as source IP and destination IP (which you should know).
    
    --
    "Ok, so the servers are down, the lights are out, and all I have to work
    with is a roll of duct tape, a ball point pen, a lighter, and a twenty year
    old copy of emacs.  Where's the problem? "
    
    
    
    

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