Re: [PATCH] tcp: Restore RFC5961-compliant behavior for SYN packets

Neal Cardwell
2014-11-21T18:55:16Z

On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 6:09 PM, Calvin Owens <calvinowens@fb.com> wrote:
> Commit c3ae62af8e755 ("tcp: should drop incoming frames without ACK
> flag set") was created to mitigate a security vulnerability in which a
> local attacker is able to inject data into locally-opened sockets by
> using TCP protocol statistics in procfs to quickly find the correct
> sequence number.
>
> This broke the RFC5961 requirement to send a challenge ACK in response
> to spurious RST packets, which was subsequently fixed by commit
> 7b514a886ba50 ("tcp: accept RST without ACK flag").
>
> Unfortunately, the RFC5961 requirement that spurious SYN packets be
> handled in a similar manner remains broken.
>
> RFC5961 section 4 states that:
>
> ... the handling of the SYN in the synchronized state SHOULD be
> performed as follows:
>
> 1) If the SYN bit is set, irrespective of the sequence number, TCP
> MUST send an ACK (also referred to as challenge ACK) to the remote
> peer:
>
> <SEQ=SND.NXT><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=ACK>
>
> After sending the acknowledgment, TCP MUST drop the unacceptable
> segment and stop processing further.
>
> By sending an ACK, the remote peer is challenged to confirm the loss
> of the previous connection and the request to start a new connection.
> A legitimate peer, after restart, would not have a TCB in the
> synchronized state. Thus, when the ACK arrives, the peer should send
> a RST segment back with the sequence number derived from the ACK
> field that caused the RST.
>
> This RST will confirm that the remote peer has indeed closed the
> previous connection. Upon receipt of a valid RST, the local TCP
> endpoint MUST terminate its connection. The local TCP endpoint
> should then rely on SYN retransmission from the remote end to
> re-establish the connection.
>
> This patch lets SYN packets through the discard added in c3ae62af8e755,
> so that spurious SYN packets are properly dealt with as per the RFC.
>
> The challenge ACK is sent unconditionally and is rate-limited, so the
> original vulnerability is not reintroduced by this patch.
>
> Signed-off-by: Calvin Owens <calvinowens@fb.com>

Acked-by: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>

neal