I'd like to bring up for discussion a topic I don't think I've seen before -- that of possible vulnerabilities in networking code in hardware devices. Specifically, several vendors are developing network adapters with full TCP/IP offload in the hardware. These aren't just cards with a network stack in firmware; a lot of these actually have the protocol implemented in silicon. iReady <http://www.iready.com> is selling the "iChip," which is targeted for lower-end, embedded applications. Adaptec and Intel have announced gigabit network adapters with full protocol offload. Driving these products is the burgeoning market for network storage (iSCSI in particular), and the fact that OS protocol handling can gobble up over half of CPU cycles just to process the incoming network packets. If you offload protocol handling, you free the CPU for other tasks. From a performance perspective, it makes perfect sense. I'll write to these companies for additional details (and hope for a response), but my guess is that the protocol is implemented in some sort of programmable logic on an ASIC, and that these adapters will not be in-circuit upgradeable. The risk I see is the discovery of a vulnerability in these hard-wired "protocol accelerators." What if a malformed packet could throw these adapters into an undefined state? In a software TCP/IP stack, you just patch the operating system and life goes on. What do you do with hardware that's discovered to be vulnerable to DoS attacks? Is there a history of hardware being vulnerable to online DoS attacks like this? Has anyone discussed this already? Regards, Richard Masoner
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