From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
To: "Marc Suñé" <marcdevel@gmail.com>
Cc: willemdebruijn.kernel@gmail.com, pabeni@redhat.com,
netdev@vger.kernel.org, dborkman@kernel.org,
vadim.fedorenko@linux.dev
Subject: Re: [PATCH net v2 0/4] discard ARP/NDP b/mcast/null announce (poison)
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:24:06 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260128202406.69c1eef1@kernel.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <cover.1769464405.git.marcdevel@gmail.com>
On Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:53:01 +0100 Marc Suñé wrote:
> The current ARP and NDP implementations accept announcements with
> multicast (broadcast incl.) and null MAC addresses as Sender HW Address
> (SHA) in ARP or src/target lladdr in NDP, and updates the cache
> for that neighbour.
>
> Multicast (incl. broadcast) and null MAC addresses shall never be
> associated with a unicast or a multicast IPv4/6 address (see RFC1812,
> section 3.3.2).
>
> ARP/NDP poisioning with a broadcast and certain multicast MAC addresses,
> especially when poisoning a Gateway IP, have some undesired implications
> compared to an ARP/NDP poisioning with a regular MAC (see commit message
> in patch 1 for more information).
>
> Worth mentioning that if an attacker is able to ARP/NDP poison in
> a L2 segment, that in itself is probably a bigger security threat
> (Man-in-middle etc., see Note2 in patch 1)
>
> Since these MACs should never be announced, this patch series discards/drops
> these packets, which prevents broadcast and multicast ARP/NDP poisoning
> vectors.
>
> This patchset only modifies the behaviour of the neighbouring subsystem
> when processing network packets. Static entries can still be added with
> mcast/bcast/null MACs.
Not a very strong opinion but my intuition would be to target
this to net-next. I read it as an improvement to RFC compliance
more than a solution.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-01-29 4:24 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-01-26 23:53 [PATCH net v2 0/4] discard ARP/NDP b/mcast/null announce (poison) Marc Suñé
2026-01-26 23:53 ` [PATCH net v2 1/4] arp: discard invalid sha addr (b/mcast ARP poison) Marc Suñé
2026-01-26 23:53 ` [PATCH net v2 2/4] selftests/net: add no ARP b/mcast,null poison test Marc Suñé
2026-01-29 4:27 ` Jakub Kicinski
2026-01-29 18:28 ` Marc Sune
2026-01-29 23:37 ` Jakub Kicinski
2026-01-26 23:53 ` [PATCH net v2 3/4] neigh: discard invalid lladdr (b/mcast poison) Marc Suñé
2026-01-29 4:24 ` [net,v2,3/4] " Jakub Kicinski
2026-01-26 23:53 ` [PATCH net v2 4/4] selftests/net: add no NDP b/mcast,null poison test Marc Suñé
2026-01-29 4:24 ` Jakub Kicinski [this message]
2026-01-29 18:39 ` [PATCH net v2 0/4] discard ARP/NDP b/mcast/null announce (poison) Marc Sune
2026-01-29 23:32 ` Jakub Kicinski
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