nanog mailing list archives

RE: TCP/BGP vulnerability - easier than you think


From: "Michel Py" <michel () arneill-py sacramento ca us>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 07:35:27 -0700


Adam Rothschild wrote:
Which begs the question, what is one to do, shy of
moving (private) peering/transit/customer /31's and
/30's into non-routable IP space, which opens up an
entirely new can of worms?

Insist that the peer uses "ip verify unicast reverse-path" on all
interfaces, or similar command for other vendors.

Fact of the matter is, MD5 computation/verification
is not cheap, and many Cisco and Juniper platforms
aren't designed to handle a barrage of MD5-hashed
TCP packets. All things considered, I think MD5
authentication will lower the bar for attackers, not
raise it.  I'm sure code optimizations could fix
things to some degree, but that's just not the case
today.

Certainly the best reason not to MD5 I have heard so far.


Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20040420-snmp.shtml
This one seems much worse than the TCP RST problem.

Relatively easy to filter though.

Michel.


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