Re: [VulnDiscuss] Re: [VulnWatch] TCP Reset Attacks: Paper and Code Now Availble

[Florian Weimer <Weimer () CERT Uni-Stuttgart DE>]

Kurt Seifried wrote:

> Please note:
>
> According to the Cisco presentation afterwards, Cisco's RST behavior makes
> it non vulnerable as there is a wait period after a certain number of bad
> RST packets are recieved. Thus Cisco IOS is basically not affected.

This is not quite true according to the advisiories.  You flood the
other side with SYN segments (which are NOT rate limited).  Only if the
segment number is acceptable, the other side generates an RST segment
which tears down the connection.  RST rate limits do NOT help here.
Even if you drop RST segments completely, the other side probably makes
a state transition away from ESTABLISHED so that connection is
eventually broken (I haven't tested this, but it's required according to
RFC 793).

The SYN issue is not present in the Watson's paper, by the way.  I don't
know how he was able to attack those TCP connections with RST segments.
Probably he didn't test an IOS-to-IOS TCP connection.

-- 
Florian Weimer                    Weimer () CERT Uni-Stuttgart DE
University of Stuttgart
ZENDAS                            fax +49-711-121-3688

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