TCP Maintenance and Minor                                        F. Gont
Extensions (tcpm)                                                UTN/FRH
Internet-Draft                                         September 5, 2005
Expires: March 9, 2006


                        ICMP attacks against TCP
                  draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-04.txt

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).

Abstract

   This document discusses the use of the Internet Control Message
   Protocol (ICMP) to perform a variety of attacks against the
   Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and other similar protocols.  It
   proposes several counter-measures to eliminate or minimize the impact



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   of these attacks.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     2.1.  The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) . . . . . . .  5
       2.1.1.  ICMP for IP version 4 (ICMP) . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       2.1.2.  ICMP for IP version 6 (ICMPv6) . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.2.  Handling of ICMP error messages  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.  Constraints in the possible solutions  . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.  General counter-measures against ICMP attacks  . . . . . . . .  8
     4.1.  TCP sequence number checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     4.2.  Port randomization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.3.  Filtering ICMP error messages based on the ICMP payload  .  9
   5.  Blind connection-reset attack  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     5.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     5.2.  Attack-specific counter-measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
       5.2.1.  Changing the reaction to hard errors . . . . . . . . . 10
       5.2.2.  Delaying the connection-reset  . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   6.  Blind throughput-reduction attack  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     6.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     6.2.  Attack-specific counter-measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   7.  Blind performance-degrading attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     7.1.  Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     7.2.  Attack-specific counter-measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   8.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   9.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   Appendix A.  The counter-measure for the PMTUD attack in action  . 21
     A.1.  Normal operation for bulk transfers  . . . . . . . . . . . 22
     A.2.  Operation during Path-MTU changes  . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
     A.3.  Idle connection being attacked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
     A.4.  Active connection being attacked after discovery of
           the Path-MTU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
     A.5.  TCP peer attacked when sending small packets just
           after the three-way handshake  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
   Appendix B.  Pseudo-code for the counter-measure for the blind
                performance-degrading attack  . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   Appendix C.  Advice and guidance to vendors  . . . . . . . . . . . 31
   Appendix D.  Changes from previous versions of the draft . . . . . 31
     D.1.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-03 . . . . . . . 31
     D.2.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-02 . . . . . . . 31
     D.3.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-01 . . . . . . . 32
     D.4.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-00 . . . . . . . 32



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   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 34

















































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1.  Introduction

   ICMP [1] is a fundamental part of the TCP/IP protocol suite, and is
   used mainly for reporting network error conditions.  However, the
   current specifications do not recommend any kind of validation checks
   on the received ICMP error messages, thus leaving the door open to a
   variety of attacks that can be performed against TCP [2] by means of
   ICMP, which include blind connection-reset, blind throughput-
   reduction, and blind performance-degrading attacks.  All these
   attacks can be performed even being off-path, without the need to
   sniff the packets that correspond to the attacked TCP connection.

   While the security implications of ICMP have been known in the
   research community for a long time, there has never been an official
   proposal on how to deal with these attacks.  Thus, only a few
   implementations have implemented validation checks on the received
   ICMP error messages to minimize the impact of these attacks.

   Recently, a disclosure process has been carried out by the UK's
   National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC), with
   the collaboration of other computer emergency response teams.  A
   large number of implementations were found vulnerable to either all
   or a subset of the attacks discussed in this document [12][13].  The
   affected systems ranged from TCP/IP implementations meant for desktop
   computers, to TCP/IP implementations meant for core Internet routers.

   This document aims to raise awareness of the use of ICMP to perform a
   variety of attacks against TCP, and proposes several counter-measures
   that eliminate or minimize the impact of these attacks.

   Section 2 provides background information on ICMP.  Section 3 of this
   document discusses the constraints in the general counter-measures
   that can be implemented against the attacks described in this
   document.  Section 4 proposes several general validation checks and
   counter-measures that can be implemented to mitigate any ICMP-based
   attack.  Finally, Section 5, Section 6, and Section 7, discuss a
   variety of ICMP attacks that can be performed against TCP, and
   propose attack-specific counter-measures that eliminate or greatly
   mitigate their impact.

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [3].


2.  Background





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2.1.  The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)

   The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is used in the Internet
   Architecture mainly to perform the fault-isolation function, that is,
   the group of actions that hosts and routers take to determine that
   there is some network failure [14].

   When an intermediate router detects a network problem while trying to
   forward an IP packet, it will usually send an ICMP error message to
   the source host, to raise awareness of the network problem taking
   place.  In the same way, there are a number of scenarios in which an
   end-system may generate an ICMP error message if it finds a problem
   while processing a datagram.  The received ICMP errors are handled to
   the corresponding transport-protocol instance, which will usually
   perform a fault recovery function.

2.1.1.  ICMP for IP version 4 (ICMP)

   [1] specifies the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to be used
   with the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4).  It defines, among other
   things, a number of error messages that can be used by end-systems
   and intermediate systems to report network errors to the sending
   host.  The Host Requirements RFC [4] classifies ICMP error messages
   into those that indicate "soft errors", and those that indicate "hard
   errors", thus roughly defining the semantics of them.

   The ICMP specification [1] also defines the ICMP Source Quench
   message (type 4, code 0), which is meant to provide a mechanism for
   flow control and congestion control.

   [5] defines a mechanism called "Path MTU Discovery" (PMTUD), which
   makes use of ICMP error messages of type 3 (Destination Unreachable),
   code 4 (fragmentation needed and DF bit set) to allow hosts to
   determine the MTU of an arbitrary internet path.

   Appendix D of [6] provides information about which ICMP error
   messages are produced by hosts, intermediate routers, or both.

2.1.2.  ICMP for IP version 6 (ICMPv6)

   [7] specifies the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6) to be
   used with the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) [8].

   ICMPv6 defines the "Packet Too Big" (type 2, code 0) error message,
   that is analogous to the ICMP "fragmentation needed and DF bit set"
   (type 3, code 4) error message. [9] defines the Path MTU Discovery
   mechanism for IP Version 6, that makes use of these messages to
   determined the MTU of an arbitrary internet path.



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   Appendix D of [6] provides information about which ICMPv6 error
   messages are produced by hosts, intermediate routers, or both.

2.2.  Handling of ICMP error messages

   The Host Requirements RFC [4] states that a TCP MUST act on an ICMP
   error message passed up from the IP layer, directing it to the
   connection that elicited the error.

   In order to allow ICMP messages to be demultiplexed by the receiving
   host, part of the original packet that elicited the message is
   included in the payload of the ICMP error message.  Thus, the
   receiving host can use that information to match the ICMP error to
   the transport protocol instance that elicited it.

   Neither the Host Requirements RFC [4] nor the original TCP
   specification [2] recommend any validation checks on the received
   ICMP messages.  Thus, as long as the ICMP payload contains the
   information that identifies an existing communication instance, it
   will be processed by the corresponding transport-protocol instance,
   and the corresponding action will be performed.

   Therefore, in the case of TCP, an attacker could send a forged ICMP
   message to the attacked host, and, as long as he is able to guess the
   four-tuple that identifies the communication instance to be attacked,
   he will be able to use ICMP to perform a variety of attacks.

   As discussed in [15], there are a number of scenarios in which an
   attacker may be able to know or guess the four-tuple that identifies
   a TCP connection.  If we assume the attacker knows the two systems
   involved in the TCP connection to be attacked, both the client-side
   and the server-side IP addresses will be known.  Furthermore, as most
   Internet services use the so-called "well-known" ports, only the
   client port number would need to be guessed.  This means that an
   attacker would need to send, in principle, at most 65536 packets to
   perform any of the attacks described in this document.  However, most
   systems choose the port numbers they use for outgoing connections
   from a subset of the whole port number space.  Thus, in practice,
   fewer packets are needed to perform any of the attacks discussed in
   this document.

   It is clear that security checks should be performed on the received
   ICMP error messages, to mitigate or eliminate the impact of the
   attacks described in this document.


3.  Constraints in the possible solutions




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   For ICMPv4, [1] states that the internet header plus the first 64
   bits of the packet that elicited the ICMP message are to be included
   in the payload of the ICMP error message.  Thus, it is assumed that
   all data needed to identify a transport protocol instance and process
   the ICMP error message is contained in the first 64 bits of the
   transport protocol header. [4] states that "the Internet header and
   at least the first 8 data octets of the datagram that triggered the
   error" are to be included in the payload of ICMP error messages, and
   that "more than 8 octets MAY be sent", thus allowing implementations
   to include more data from the original packet than those required by
   the original ICMP specification.  The Requirements for IP Version 4
   Routers RFC [10] states that ICMP error messages "SHOULD contain as
   much of the original datagram as possible without the length of the
   ICMP datagram exceeding 576 bytes".

   Thus, for ICMP messages generated by hosts, we can only expect to get
   the entire IP header of the original packet, plus the first 64 bits
   of its payload.  For TCP, this means that the only fields that will
   be included in the ICMP payload are: the source port number, the
   destination port number, and the 32-bit TCP sequence number.  This
   clearly imposes a constraint on the possible validation checks that
   can be performed, as there is not much information avalable on which
   to perform them.

   This means, for example, that even if TCP were signing its segments
   by means of the TCP MD5 signature option [16], this mechanism could
   not be used as a counter-measure against ICMP-based attacks, because,
   as ICMP messages include only a piece of the TCP segment that
   elicited the error, the MD5 [17] signature could not be recalculated.
   In the same way, even if the attacked peer were authenticating its
   packets at the IP layer [6], because only a part of the original IP
   packet would be available, the signature used for authentication
   could not be recalculated, and thus this mechanism could not be used
   as a counter-measure aganist ICMP-based attacks against TCP.

   For IPv6, the payload of ICMPv6 error messages includes as many
   octets from the IPv6 packet that elicited the ICMPv6 error message as
   will fit without making the resulting ICMPv6 packet exceed the
   minimum IPv6 MTU (1280 octets) [7].  Thus, more information is
   available than in the IPv4 case.

   Hosts could require ICMP error messages to be authenticated [6], in
   order to act upon them.  However, while this requirement could make
   sense for those ICMP error messages sent by hosts, it would not be
   feasible for those ICMP error messages generated by routers, as this
   would imply either that the attacked host should have a security
   asociation [6] with every existing intermediate system, or that it
   should be able to establish one dynamically.  Current levels of



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   deployment of protocols for dynamic establishment of security
   associations makes this unfeasible.  Also, there may be some cases,
   such as embedded devices, in which the processing power requirements
   of authentication could not allow IPSec authentication to be
   implemented effectively.


4.  General counter-measures against ICMP attacks

   There are a number of counter-measures that can be implemented to
   eliminate or mitigate the impact of the attacks discussed in this
   document.  Rather than being alternative counter-measures, they can
   be implemented together to increase the protection against these
   attacks.  In particular, all TCP implementations SHOULD perform the
   TCP sequence number checking described in Section 4.1.

4.1.  TCP sequence number checking

   TCP SHOULD check that the TCP sequence number contained in the
   payload of the ICMP error message is within the range SND.UNA =<
   SEG.SEQ < SND.NXT.  This means that the sequence number should be
   within the range of the data already sent but not yet acknowledged.
   If an ICMP error message does not pass this check, it SHOULD be
   discarded.

   Even if an attacker were able to guess the four-tuple that identifies
   the TCP connection, this additional check would reduce the
   possibility of considering a spoofed ICMP packet as valid to
   Flight_Size/2^^32 (where Flight_Size is the number of data bytes
   already sent to the remote peer, but not yet acknowledged [18]).  For
   connections in the SYN-SENT or SYN-RECEIVED states, this would reduce
   the possibility of considering a spoofed ICMP packet as valid to
   1/2^^32.  For a TCP endpoint with no data "in flight", this would
   completely eliminate the possibility of success of these attacks.

   This counter-measure has been implemented in Linux [19] for many
   years, in OpenBSD [20] since 2004, and in FreeBSD [21] and NetBSD
   [22] since 2005.

   It is important to note that while this check greatly increases the
   number of packets required to perform any of the attacks discussed in
   this document, this may not be enough in those scenarios in which
   bandwidth is easily available, and/or large TCP windows [23] are
   used.  Therefore, implementation of the attack-specific counter-
   measures discussed in this document is strongly RECOMMENDED.






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4.2.  Port randomization

   As discussed in the previous sections, in order to perform any of the
   attacks described in this document, an attacker would need to guess
   (or know) the four-tuple that identifies the connection to be
   attacked.  Increasing the port number range used for outgoing TCP
   connections, and randomizing the port number chosen for each outgoing
   TCP conenctions would make it harder for an attacker to perform any
   of the attacks discussed in this document.

   [24] discusses a number of algorithms to randomize the ephemeral
   ports used by clients.

4.3.  Filtering ICMP error messages based on the ICMP payload

   The source address of ICMP error messages does not need to be spoofed
   to perform the attacks described in this document.  Therefore, simple
   filtering based on the source address of ICMP error messages does not
   serve as a counter-measure against these attacks.  However, a more
   advanced packet filtering could be implemented in firewalls as a
   counter-measure.  Firewalls implementing such advanced filtering
   would look at the payload of the ICMP error messages, and would
   perform ingress and egress packet filtering based on the source IP
   address of the IP header contained in the payload of the ICMP error
   message.  As the source IP address contained in the payload of the
   ICMP error message does need to be spoofed to perform the attacks
   described in this document, this kind of advanced filtering would
   serve as a counter-measure against these attacks.


5.  Blind connection-reset attack

5.1.  Description

   When TCP is handled an ICMP error message, it will perform its fault
   recovery function, as follows:

   o  If the network problem being reported is a hard error, TCP will
      abort the corresponding connection.

   o  If the network problem being reported is a soft error, TCP will
      just record this information, and repeatedly retransmit its data
      until they either get acknowledged, or the connection times out.

   The Host Requirements RFC [4] states that a host SHOULD abort the
   corresponding connection when receiving an ICMP error message that
   indicates a "hard error", and states that ICMP error messages of type
   3 (Destination Unreachable) codes 2 (protocol unreachable), 3 (port



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   unreachable), and 4 (fragmentation needed and DF bit set) should be
   considered to indicate hard errors.  While [7] did not exist when [4]
   was published, one could extrapolate the concept of "hard errors" to
   ICMPv6 error messages of type 1 (Destination unreachable) codes 1
   (communication with destination administratively prohibited), and 4
   (port unreachable).

   Thus, an attacker could use ICMP to perform a blind connection-reset
   attack.  That is, even being off-path, an attacker could reset any
   TCP connection taking place.  In order to perform such an attack, an
   attacker would send any ICMP error message that indicates a "hard
   error", to either of the two TCP endpoints of the connection.
   Because of TCP's fault recovery policy, the connection would be
   immediately aborted.

   As discussed in Section 2.2, all an attacker needs to know to perform
   such an attack is the socket pair that identifies the TCP connection
   to be attacked.  In some scenarios, the IP addresses and port numbers
   in use may be easily guessed or known to the attacker [15].

   Some stacks are known to extrapolate ICMP errors across TCP
   connections, increasing the impact of this attack, as a single ICMP
   packet could bring down all the TCP connections between the
   corresponding peers.

   It is important to note that even if TCP itself were protected
   against the blind connection-reset attack described in [15] and [25],
   by means authentication at the network layer [6], by means of the TCP
   MD5 signature option [16], or by means of the mechanism proposed in
   [25], the blind connection-reset attack described in this document
   would still succeed.

5.2.  Attack-specific counter-measures

5.2.1.  Changing the reaction to hard errors

   An analysis of the circumstances in which ICMP messages that indicate
   hard errors may be received can shed some light to eliminate the
   impact of ICMP-based blind connection-reset attacks.

   ICMP type 3 (Destination Unreachable), code 2 (protocol unreachable)

      This ICMP error message indicates that the host sending the ICMP
      error message received a packet meant for a transport protocol it
      does not support.  For connection-oriented protocols such as TCP,
      one could expect to receive such an error as the result of a
      connection-establishment attempt.  However, it would be strange to
      get such an error during the life of a connection, as this would



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      indicate that support for that transport protocol has been removed
      from the host sending the error message during the life of the
      corresponding connection.  Thus, it would be fair to treat ICMP
      protocol unreachable error messages as soft errors (or completely
      ignore them) if they are meant for connections that are in
      synchronized states.  For TCP, this means TCP should treat ICMP
      protocol unreachable error messages as soft errors (or completely
      ignore them) if they are meant for connections that are in the
      ESTABLISHED, FIN-WAIT-1, FIN-WAIT-2, CLOSE-WAIT, CLOSING, LAST-ACK
      or TIME-WAIT states.

   ICMP type 3 (Destination Unreachable), code 3 (port unreachable)

      This error message indicates that the host sending the ICMP error
      message received a packet meant for a socket (IP address, port
      number) on which there is no process listening.  Those transport
      protocols which have their own mechanisms for notifying this
      condition should not be receiving these error messages.  However,
      the Host Requirements RFC [4] states that even those transport
      protocols that have their own mechanism for notifying the sender
      that a port is unreachable MUST nevertheless accept an ICMP Port
      Unreachable for the same purpose.  For security reasons, it would
      be fair to treat ICMP port unreachable messages as soft errors (or
      completely ignore them) when they are meant for protocols that
      have their own mechanism for reporting this error condition.

   ICMP type 3 (Destination Unreachable), code 4 (fragmentation needed
   and DF bit set)

      This error message indicates that an intermediate node needed to
      fragment a datagram, but the DF (Don't Fragment) bit in the IP
      header was set.  Those systems that do not implement the PMTUD
      mechanism should not be sending their IP packets with the DF bit
      set, and thus should not be receiving these ICMP error messages.
      Thus, it would be fair for them to treat this ICMP error message
      as indicating a soft error, therefore not aborting the
      corresponding connection when such an error message is received.
      On the other hand, and for obvious reasons, those systems
      implementing the Path-MTU Discovery (PMTUD) mechanism [5] should
      not abort the corresponding connection when such an ICMP error
      message is received.

   ICMPv6 type 1 (Destination Unreachable), code 1 (communication with
   destination administratively prohibited)

      This error message indicates that the destination is unreachable
      because of an administrative policy.  For connection-oriented
      protocols such as TCP, one could expect to receive such an error



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      as the result of a connection-establishment attempt.  Receiving
      such an error for a connection in any of the synchronized states
      would mean that the administrative policy changed during the life
      of the connection.  Therefore, while it would be possible for a
      firewall to be reconfigured during the life of a connection, it
      would be fair, for security reasons, to ignore these messages for
      connections that are in the ESTABLISHED, FIN-WAIT-1, FIN-WAIT-2,
      CLOSE-WAIT, CLOSING, LAST-ACK or TIME-WAIT states.

   ICMPv6 type 1 (Destination Unreachable), code 4 (port unreachable)

      This error message is analogous to the ICMP type 3 (Destination
      Unreachable), code 3 (Port unreachable) error message discussed
      above.  Therefore, the same considerations apply.

   Therefore, TCP SHOULD treat all of the above messages as indicating
   "soft errors", rather than "hard errors", and thus SHOULD NOT abort
   the corresponding connection upon receipt of them.  This is policy is
   based on the premise that TCP should be as robust as possible.  Also,
   as discussed in Section 5.1, hosts SHOULD NOT extrapolate ICMP errors
   across TCP connections.

   In case the received message were legitimate, it would mean that the
   "hard error" condition appeared during the life of the connection.
   However, there is no reason to think that in the same way this error
   condition appeared, it won't get solved in the near term.  Therefore,
   treating the received ICMP error messages as "soft errors" would make
   TCP more robust, and could avoid TCP from aborting a TCP connection
   unnecesarily.

   One scenario in which a host would benefit from treating the so-
   called ICMP "hard errors" as "soft errors" would be that in which the
   packets that correspond to a given TCP connection are routed along
   multiple different paths.  Some (but not all) of these paths may be
   experiencing an error condition, and therefore generating the so-
   called ICMP hard errors.  However, communication should survive if
   there is still a working path to the destination host [26].  Thus,
   treating the so-called "hard errors" as "soft errors" when a
   connection is in any of the synchronized states would make TCP
   achieve this goal.

   It is interesting to note that, as ICMP error messages are
   unreliable, transport protocols should not depend on them for correct
   functioning.  In the event one of these messages were legitimate, the
   corresponding connection should eventually time out.

   This counter-measure has been implemented in BSD-derived TCP/IP
   implementations (e.g., [21], [22], and [20]) for more than ten years



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   [27][28].  The Linux kernel has implemented this policy for more than
   ten years, too [19].

5.2.2.  Delaying the connection-reset

   An alternative counter-measure could be to delay the connection
   reset.  Rather than immediately aborting a connection, a TCP would
   abort a connection only after an ICMP error message indicating a hard
   error has been received, and the corresponding data have already been
   retransmitted more than some specified number of times.

   The rationale behind this proposed fix is that if a host can make
   forward progress on a connection, it can completely disregard the
   "hard errors" being indicated by the received ICMP error messages.

   While this counter-measure could be useful, we think that the
   counter-measure discussed in Section 5.2.1 is easier to implement,
   and provides increased protection against this type of attack.


6.  Blind throughput-reduction attack

6.1.  Description

   The Host requirements RFC [4] states that hosts MUST react to ICMP
   Source Quench messages by slowing transmission on the connection.
   Thus, an attacker could send ICMP Source Quench (type 4, code 0)
   messages to a TCP endpoint to make it reduce the rate at which it
   sends data to the other end-point of the connection. [4] further adds
   that the RECOMMENDED procedure is to put the corresponding connection
   in the slow-start phase of TCP's congestion control algorithm [18].
   In the case of those implementations that use an initial congestion
   window of one segment, a sustained attack would reduce the throughput
   of the attacked connection to about SMSS (Sender Maximum Segment
   Size) [18] bytes per RTT (round-trip time).  The throughput achieved
   during attack might be a little higher if a larger initial congestion
   window is in use [29].

6.2.  Attack-specific counter-measures

   The Host Requirements RFC [4] states that hosts MUST react to ICMP
   Source Quench messages by slowing transmission on the connection.
   However, as discussed in the Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers
   RFC [10], research seems to suggest ICMP Source Quench is an
   ineffective (and unfair) antidote for congestion. [10] further states
   that routers SHOULD NOT send ICMP Source Quench messages in response
   to congestion.  On the other hand, TCP implements its own congestion
   control mechanisms [18] [30].  Thus, hosts SHOULD completely ignore



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   ICMP Source Quench messages meant for TCP connections.

   This behavior has been implemented in Linux [19] since 2004, and in
   FreeBSD [21], NetBSD [22], and OpenBSD [20] since 2005.


7.  Blind performance-degrading attack

7.1.  Description

   When one IP host has a large amount of data to send to another host,
   the data will be transmitted as a series of IP datagrams.  It is
   usually preferable that these datagrams be of the largest size that
   does not require fragmentation anywhere along the path from the
   source to the destination.  This datagram size is referred to as the
   Path MTU (PMTU), and is equal to the minimum of the MTUs of each hop
   in the path [5].

   A technique called "Path MTU Discovery" (PMTUD) mechanism lets IP
   hosts determine the Path MTU of an arbitrary internet path. [5] and
   [9] specify the PMTUD mechanism for IPv4 and IPv6, respectively.

   The PMTUD mechanism for IPv4 uses the Don't Fragment (DF) bit in the
   IP header to dynamically discover the Path MTU.  The basic idea
   behind the PMTUD mechanism is that a source host assumes that the MTU
   of the path is that of the first hop, and sends all its datagrams
   with the DF bit set.  If any of the datagrams is too large to be
   forwarded without fragmentation by some intermediate router, the
   router will discard the corresponding datagram, and will return an
   ICMP "Destination Unreachable" (type 3) "fragmentation neeed and DF
   set" (code 4) error message to sending host.  This message will
   report the MTU of the constricting hop, so that the sending host
   reduces the assumed Path-MTU accordingly.

   For IPv6, intermediate systems do not fragment packets.  Thus,
   there's an "implicit" DF bit set in every packet sent on a network.
   If any of the datagrams is too large to be forwarded without
   fragmentation by some intermediate router, the router will discard
   the corresponding datagram, and will return an ICMPv6 "Packet Too
   Big" (type 2, code 0) error message to sending host.  This message
   will report the MTU of the constricting hop, so that the sending host
   can reduce the assumed Path-MTU accordingly.

   As discussed in both [5] and [9], the Path-MTU Discovery mechanism
   can be used to attack TCP.  An attacker could send a forged ICMP
   "Destination Unreachable, fragmentation needed and DF set" packet (or
   their IPv6 counterpart) to the sending host, making it advertise a
   low Next-Hop MTU.  As a result, the attacked system would reduce the



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   size of the packets it sends for the corresponding connection
   accordingly.

   The effect of this attack is two-fold.  On one hand, it will increase
   the headers/data ratio, thus increasing the overhead needed to send
   data to the remote TCP end-point.  On the other hand, if the attacked
   system wanted to keep the same throughput it was achieving before
   being attacked, it would have to increase the packet rate.  On
   virtually all systems this will lead to an increase in the IRQ
   (Interrrupt ReQuest) rate, thus increasing processor utilization, and
   degrading the overall system performance.

   For IPv4, the reported Next-Hop MTU could be as low as 68 octets, as
   [11] requires every internet module to be able to forward a datagram
   of 68 octets without further fragmentation.  For IPv6, the reported
   Next-Hop MTU could be as low as 1280 octets (the minimum IPv6 MTU)
   [8].

7.2.  Attack-specific counter-measures

   Henceforth, we will refer to both ICMP "fragmentation needed and DF
   bit set" and ICMPv6 "Packet Too Big" messages as "ICMP Packet Too
   Big" messages.

   In addition to the general validation check described in Section 4.1,
   a counter-measure similar to that described in Section 5.2.2 could be
   implemented to greatly minimize the impact of this attack.

   This would mean that upon receipt of an ICMP "Packet Too Big" error
   message, TCP would just record this information, and would honor it
   only when the corresponding data had already been retransmitted a
   specified number of times.

   While this policy would greatly mitigate the impact of the attack
   against the PMTUD mechanism, it would also mean that it might take
   TCP more time to discover the Path-MTU for a TCP connection.  This
   would be particularly annoying for connections that have just been
   established, as it might take TCP several transmission attempts (and
   the corresponding timeouts) before it discovers the PMTU for the
   corresponding connection.  Thus, this policy would increase the time
   it takes for data to begin to be received at the destination host.

   We would like to protect TCP from the attack against the PMTUD
   mechanism, while still allowing TCP to quickly determine the initial
   Path-MTU for a connection.

   To achieve both goals, we can divide the traditional PMTUD mechanism
   into two stages: Initial Path-MTU Discovery, and Path-MTU Update.



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   The Initial Path-MTU Discovery stage is when TCP tries to send
   segments that are larger than the ones that have so far been sent and
   acknowledged for this connection.  That is, in the Initial Path-MTU
   Discovery stage TCP has no record of these large segments getting to
   the destination host, and thus it would be fair to believe the
   network when it reports that these packets are too large to reach the
   destination host without being fragmented.

   The Path-MTU Update stage is when TCP tries to send segments that are
   equal to or smaller than the ones that have already been sent and
   acknowledged for this connection.  During the Path-MTU Update stage,
   TCP already has knowledge of the estimated Path-MTU for the given
   connection.  Thus, it would be fair to be more cautious with the
   errors being reported by the network.

   In order to allow TCP to distinguish segments between those
   performing Initial Path-MTU Discovery and those performing Path-MTU
   Update, two new variables should be introduced to TCP: maxsizeacked
   and maxsizesent.

   maxsizesent would hold the size (in octets) of the largest packet
   that has so far been sent for this connection.  It would be
   initialized to 68 (the minimum IPv4 MTU) when the underlying internet
   protocol is IPv4, and would be initialized to 1280 (the minimum IPv6
   MTU) when the underlying internet protocol is IPv6.  Whenever a
   packet larger than maxsizesent octets is sent, maxsizesent should be
   set to that value.

   On the other hand, maxsizeacked would hold the size (in octets) of
   the largest packet that has so far been acknowledged for this
   connection.  It would be initialized to 68 (the minimum IPv4 MTU)
   when the underlying internet protocol is IPv4, and would be
   initialized to 1280 (the minimum IPv6 MTU) when the underlying
   internet protocol is IPv6.  Whenever an acknowledgement for a packet
   larger than maxsizeacked octets is received, maxsizeacked should be
   set to the size of that acknowledged packet.

   Upon receipt of an ICMP "Packet Too Big" error message, the Next-Hop
   MTU claimed by the ICMP message (henceforth "claimedmtu") should be
   compared with maxsizesent.  If claimedmtu is equal to or larger than
   maxsizesent, then the ICMP error message should be silently
   discarded.  The rationale for this is that the ICMP error message
   cannot be legitimate if it claims to have been elicited by a packet
   larger than the largest packet we have so far sent for this
   connection.

   If this check is passed, claimedmtu should be compared with
   maxsizeacked.  If claimedmtu is equal to or larger than maxsizeacked,



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   TCP is supposed to be at the Initial Path-MTU Discovery stage, and
   thus the ICMP "Packet Too Big" error message should be honored
   immediately.  That is, the assumed Path-MTU should be updated
   according to the Next-Hop MTU claimed in the ICMP error message.
   Also, maxsizesent should be reset to the minimum MTU of the internet
   protocol in use (68 for IPv4, and 1280 for IPv6).

   On the other hand, if claimedmtu is smaller than maxsizeacked, TCP is
   supposed to be in the Path-MTU Update stage.  At this stage, we
   should be more cautious with the errors being reported by the
   network, and should therefore just record the received error message,
   and delay the update of the assumed Path-MTU.

   To perform this delay, one new variable and one new parameter should
   be introduced to TCP: nsegrto and MAXSEGRTO. nsegrto will hold the
   number of times a specified segment has timed out.  It should be
   initialized to zero, and should be incremented by one everytime the
   corresponding segment times out.  MAXSEGRRTO should specify the
   number of times a given segment must timeout before an ICMP "Packet
   Too Big" error message can be honored, and can be set, in principle,
   to any value greater than or equal to 0.

   Thus, if nsegrto is greater than or equal to MAXSEGRTO, and there's a
   pending ICMP "Packet Too Big" error message, the correspoing error
   message should be processed.  At that point, maxsizeacked should be
   set to claimedmtu, and maxsizesent should be set to 68 (for IPv4) or
   1280 (for IPv6).

   If while there is a pending ICMP "Packet Too Big" error message the
   TCP SEQ claimed by the pending message is acknowledged (i.e., an ACK
   that acknowledges that sequence number is received), then the
   "pending error" condition should be cleared.

   The rationale behind performing this delayed processing of ICMP
   "Packet Too Big" messages is that if there is progress on the
   connection, the ICMP "Packet Too Big" errors must be a false claim.

   MAXSEGRTO can be set, in principle, to any value greater than or
   equal to 0.  Setting MAXSEGRTO to 0 would make TCP perform the
   traditional PMTUD mechanism defined in [5] and [9].  A MAXSEGRTO of 1
   should provide enough protection for most cases.  In any case,
   implementations are free to choose higher values for this constant.
   MAXSEGRTO could be a function of the Next-Hop MTU claimed in the
   received ICMP "Packet Too Big" message.  That is, higher values for
   MAXSEGRTO could be imposed when the received ICMP "Packet Too Big"
   message claims a Next-Hop MTU that is smaller than some specified
   value.




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   In the event a higher level of protection is desired at the expense
   of a higher delay in the discovery of the Path-MTU, an implementation
   could consider TCP to always be in the Path-MTU Update stage, thus
   always delaying the update of the assumed Path-MTU.

   Appendix B shows the proposed counter-measure in pseudo-code.
   Appendix A shows the proposed counter-measure in action.

   This behavior has been implemented in NetBSD [22] and OpenBSD [20]
   since 2005.

   It is important to note that the mechanism proposed in this section
   is an improvement to the current Path-MTU discovery mechanism, to
   mitigate its security implications.  The current PMTUD mechanism, as
   specified by [5] and [9], still suffers from some functionality
   problems [31] that this document does not aim to address.  Thus, it
   does not aleviate the need for other improvements to the current
   PMTUD mechanism or the introduction of an alternative PMTUD that
   replaces the current one, to solve the remaining issues.

   A mechanism that aims to address those remaining issues is described
   in [32].


8.  Security Considerations

   This document describes the use of ICMP error messages to perform a
   number of attacks against the TCP protocol, and proposes a number of
   counter-measures that either eliminate or reduce the impact of these
   attacks.


9.  Acknowledgements

   This document was inspired by Mika Liljeberg, while discussing some
   issues related to [33] by private e-mail.  The author would like to
   thank James Carlson, Alan Cox, Theo de Raadt, Ted Faber, Juan
   Fraschini, Markus Friedl, Guillermo Gont, Vivek Kakkar, Michael
   Kerrisk, Mika Liljeberg, David Miller, Miles Nordin, Eloy Paris,
   Kacheong Poon, Andrew Powell, Pekka Savola, and Joe Touch, for
   contributing many valuable comments.

   Markus Friedl, Chad Loder, and the author of this document, produced
   and tested in OpenBSD [20] the first implementation of the counter-
   measure described in Section 7.2.  This first implementation helped
   to test the effectiveness of the ideas introduced in this document,
   and has served as a reference implementation for other operating
   systems.



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   The author would like to thank the UK's National Infrastructure
   Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) for coordinating the disclosure
   of these issues with a large number of vendors and CSIRTs (Computer
   Security Incident Response Teams).

   The author wishes to express deep and heartfelt gratitude to Jorge
   Oscar Gont and Nelida Garcia, for their precious motivation and
   guidance.


10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [1]   Postel, J., "Internet Control Message Protocol", STD 5,
         RFC 792, September 1981.

   [2]   Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC 793,
         September 1981.

   [3]   Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
         Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [4]   Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Communication
         Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122, October 1989.

   [5]   Mogul, J. and S. Deering, "Path MTU discovery", RFC 1191,
         November 1990.

   [6]   Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for the
         Internet Protocol", RFC 2401, November 1998.

   [7]   Conta, A. and S. Deering, "Internet Control Message Protocol
         (ICMPv6) for the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
         Specification", RFC 2463, December 1998.

   [8]   Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6)
         Specification", RFC 2460, December 1998.

   [9]   McCann, J., Deering, S., and J. Mogul, "Path MTU Discovery for
         IP version 6", RFC 1981, August 1996.

   [10]  Baker, F., "Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers", RFC 1812,
         June 1995.

   [11]  Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
         September 1981.




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10.2.  Informative References

   [12]  NISCC, "NISCC Vulnerability Advisory 532967/NISCC/ICMP:
         Vulnerability Issues in ICMP packets with TCP payloads",  http:
         //www.niscc.gov.uk/niscc/docs/al-20050412-00308.html?lang=en,
         2005.

   [13]  US-CERT, "US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#222750: TCP/IP
         Implementations do not adequately validate ICMP error
         messages",  http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/222750, 2005.

   [14]  Clark, D., "Fault isolation and recovery", RFC 816, July 1982.

   [15]  Watson, P., "Slipping in the Window: TCP Reset Attacks", 2004
         CanSecWest Conference , 2004.

   [16]  Heffernan, A., "Protection of BGP Sessions via the TCP MD5
         Signature Option", RFC 2385, August 1998.

   [17]  Rivest, R., "The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC 1321,
         April 1992.

   [18]  Allman, M., Paxson, V., and W. Stevens, "TCP Congestion
         Control", RFC 2581, April 1999.

   [19]  The Linux Project, "http://www.kernel.org".

   [20]  The OpenBSD Project, "http://www.openbsd.org".

   [21]  The FreeBSD Project, "http://www.freebsd.org".

   [22]  The NetBSD Project, "http://www.netbsd.org".

   [23]  Jacobson, V., Braden, B., and D. Borman, "TCP Extensions for
         High Performance", RFC 1323, May 1992.

   [24]  Larsen, M., "Port Randomisation",
         draft-larsen-tsvwg-port-randomisation-00 (work in progress),
         October 2004.

   [25]  Dalal, M., "Improving TCP's Robustness to Blind In-Window
         Attacks", draft-ietf-tcpm-tcpsecure-03 (work in progress),
         May 2005.

   [26]  Clark, D., "The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet
         Protocols", Computer Communication Review Vol. 18, No. 4, 1988.

   [27]  Wright, G. and W. Stevens, "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2: The



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         Implementation", Addison-Wesley , 1994.

   [28]  McKusick, M., Bostic, K., Karels, M., and J. Quarterman, "The
         Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System",
         Addison-Wesley , 1996.

   [29]  Allman, M., Floyd, S., and C. Partridge, "Increasing TCP's
         Initial Window", RFC 3390, October 2002.

   [30]  Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S., and D. Black, "The Addition of
         Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP", RFC 3168,
         September 2001.

   [31]  Lahey, K., "TCP Problems with Path MTU Discovery", RFC 2923,
         September 2000.

   [32]  Mathis, M., "Path MTU Discovery", draft-ietf-pmtud-method-04
         (work in progress), February 2005.

   [33]  Gont, F., "TCP's Reaction to Soft Errors",
         draft-gont-tcpm-tcp-soft-errors-01 (work in progress),
         October 2004.

   [34]  Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821,
         April 2001.

   [35]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L.,
         Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol --
         HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.


Appendix A.  The counter-measure for the PMTUD attack in action

   This appendix shows the proposed counter-measure for the ICMP attack
   against the PMTUD mechanism in action.  It shows both how the fix
   protects TCP from being attacked and how the counter-measure works in
   normal scenarios.  As discussed in Section 7.2, this Appendix assumes
   the PMTUD-specific counter-measure is implemented in addition to the
   TCP sequence number checking described in Section 4.1.

   Figure 1 illustrates an hypothetical scenario in which two hosts are
   connected by means of three intermediate routers.  It also shows the
   MTU of each hypothetical hop.  All the following subsections assume
   the network setup of this figure.

   Also, for simplicity sake, all subsections assume an IP header of 20
   octets and a TCP header of 20 octets.  Thus, for example, when the
   PMTU is assumed to be 1500 octets, TCP will send segments that



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   contain, at most, 1460 octets of data.

   For simplicity sake, all the following subsections assume the TCP
   implementation at Host 1 has chosen a a MAXSEGRTO of 1.


   +----+        +----+        +----+        +----+        +----+
   | H1 |--------| R1 |--------| R2 |--------| R3 |--------| H2 |
   +----+        +----+        +----+        +----+        +----+
         MTU=4464      MTU=2048      MTU=1500      MTU=4464

   Figure 1: Hypothetical scenario

A.1.  Normal operation for bulk transfers

   This subsection shows the proposed counter-measure in normal
   operation, when a TCP connection is used for bulk transfers.  That
   is, it shows how the proposed counter-measure works when there is no
   attack taking place, and a TCP connection is used for transferring
   large amounts of data.  This section assumes that just after the
   connection is established, one of the TCP endpoints begins to
   transfer data in packets that are as large as possible.


      Host 1                                         Host 2

   1.    -->           <SEQ=100><CTL=SYN>            -->
   2.    <--     <SEQ=X><ACK=101><CTL=SYN,ACK>       <--
   3.    -->      <SEQ=101><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK>        -->
   4.    --> <SEQ=101><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK><DATA=4424>  -->
   5.        <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=2048, TCPseq#=101 <--- R1
   6.    --> <SEQ=101><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK><DATA=2008>  -->
   7.        <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=1500, TCPseq#=101 <--- R2
   8.    --> <SEQ=101><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK><DATA=1460>  -->
   9.    <--      <SEQ=X+1><ACK=1561><CTL=ACK>       <--


   Figure 2: Normal operation for bulk transfers

   nsegrto is initialized to zero.  Both maxsizeacked and maxsizesent
   are initialized to the minimum MTU for the internet protocol being
   used (68 for IPv4, and 1280 for IPv6).

   In lines 1 to 3 the three-way handshake takes place, and the
   connection is established.  In line 4, H1 tries to send a full-sized
   TCP segment.  As described by [5] and [9], in this case TCP will try
   to send a segment with 4424 bytes of data, which will result in an IP
   packet of 4464 octets.  Therefore, maxsizesent is set to 4464.  When



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   the packet reaches R1, it elicits an ICMP "Packet Too Big" error
   message.

   In line 5, H1 receives the ICMP error message, which reports a Next-
   Hop MTU of 2048 octets.  After performing the TCP sequence number
   check described in Section 4.1, the Next-Hop MTU reported by the ICMP
   error message (claimedmtu) is compared with maxsizesent.  As it is
   smaller than maxsizesent, it passes the check, and thus is then
   compared with maxsizeacked.  As claimedmtu is larger than
   maxsizeacked, TCP assumes that the corresponding TCP segment was
   performing the Initial PMTU Discovery.  Therefore, the TCP at H1
   honors the ICMP message by updating the assumed Path-MTU. maxsizesent
   is reset to the minimum MTU of the internet protocol in use (68 for
   IPv4, and 1280 for IPv6).

   In line 6, the TCP at H1 sends a segment with 2008 bytes of data,
   which results in an IP packet of 2048 octets. maxsizesent is thus set
   to 2008 bytes.  When the packet reaches R2, it elicits an ICMP
   "Packet Too Big" error message.

   In line 7, H1 receives the ICMP error message, which reports a Next-
   Hop MTU of 1500 octets.  After performing the TCP sequence number
   check, the Next-Hop MTU reported by the ICMP error message
   (claimedmtu) is compared with maxsizesent.  As it is smaller than
   maxsizesent, it passes the check, and thus is then compared with
   maxsizeacked.  As claimedmtu is larger than maxsizeacked, TCP assumes
   that the corresponding TCP segment was performing the Initial PMTU
   Discovery.  Therefore, the TCP at H1 honors the ICMP message by
   updating the assumed Path-MTU. maxsizesent is reset to the minimum
   MTU of the internet protocol in use.

   In line 8, the TCP at H1 sends a segment with 1460 bytes of data,
   which results in an IP packet of 1500 octets. maxsizesent is thus set
   to 1500.  This packet reaches H2, where it elicits an acknowledgement
   (ACK) segment.

   In line 9, H1 finally gets the acknowledgement for the data segment.
   As the corresponding packet was larger than maxsizeacked, TCP updates
   maxsizeacked, setting it to 1500.  At this point TCP has discovered
   the Path-MTU for this TCP connection.

A.2.  Operation during Path-MTU changes

   Let us suppose a TCP connection between H1 and H2 has already been
   established, and that the PMTU for the connection has already been
   discovered to be 1500.  At this point, both maxsizesent and
   maxsizeacked are equal to 1500, and nsegrto is equal to 0.  Suppose
   some time later the PMTU decreases to 1492.  For simplicity, let us



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   suppose that the Path-MTU has decreased because the MTU of the link
   between R2 and R3 has decreased from 1500 to 1492.  Figure 3
   illustrates how the proposed counter-measure would work in this
   scenario.


        Host 1                                         Host 2

   1.                     (Path-MTU decreases)
   2.      -->  <SEQ=100><ACK=X><CTL=ACK><DATA=1500>   -->
   3.         <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=1492, TCPseq#=100 <--- R2
   4.                     (Segment times out)
   5.      -->  <SEQ=100><ACK=X><CTL=ACK><DATA=1452>   -->
   6.      <--      <SEQ=X><ACK=1552><CTL=ACK>         <--


   Figure 3: Operation during Path-MTU changes

   In line 1, the Path-MTU for this connection decreases from 1500 to
   1492.  In line 2, the TCP at H1, without being aware of the Path-MTU
   change, sends a 1500-byte packet to H2.  When the packet reaches R2,
   it elicits an ICMP "Packet Too Big" error message.

   In line 3, H1 receives the ICMP error message, which reports a Next-
   Hop MTU of 1492 octets.  After performing the TCP sequence number
   check, the Next-Hop MTU reported by the ICMP error message
   (claimedmtu) is compared with maxsizesent.  As claimedmtu is smaller
   than maxsizesent, it is then compared with maxsizeacked.  As
   claimedmtu is smaller than maxsizeacked (full-sized packets were
   getting to the remote end-point), this packet is assumed to be
   performing Path-MTU Update.  And a "pending error" condition is
   recorded.

   In line 4, the segment times out.  Thus, nsegrto is incremented by 1.
   As nsegrto is greater than or equal to MAXSEGRTO, the assumed Path-
   MTU is updated. nsegrto is reset to 0, and maxsizeacked is set to
   claimedmtu, and maxsizesent is set to the minimum MTU of the internet
   protocol in use.

   In line 5, H1 retransmits the data using the updated PMTU, and thus
   maxsizesent is set to 1492.  The resulting packet reaches H2, where
   it elicits an acknowledgement (ACK) segment.

   In line 6, H1 finally gets the acknowledgement for the data segment.
   At this point TCP has discovered the new Path-MTU for this TCP
   connection.





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A.3.  Idle connection being attacked

   Let us suppose a TCP connection between H1 and H2 has already been
   established, and the PMTU for the connection has already been
   discovered to be 1500.  Figure 4 shows a sample time-line diagram
   that illustrates an idle connection being attacked.


        Host 1                                           Host 2

   1.     -->     <SEQ=100><ACK=X><CTL=ACK><DATA=50>      -->
   2.     <--         <SEQ=X><ACK=150><CTL=ACK>           <--
   3.         <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=68, TCPseq#=100 <---
   4.         <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=68, TCPseq#=100 <---
   5.         <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=68, TCPseq#=100 <---


   Figure 4: Idle connection being attacked

   In line 1, H1 sends its last bunch of data.  At line 2, H2
   acknowledges the receipt of these data.  Then the connection becomes
   idle.  In lines 3, 4, and 5, an attacker sends forged ICMP "Packet
   Too Big" error messages to H1.  Regardless of how many packets it
   sends and the TCP sequence number each ICMP packet includes, none of
   these ICMP error messages will pass the TCP sequence number check
   described in Section 4.1, as H1 has no unacknowledged data in flight
   to H2.  Therefore, the attack does not succeed.

A.4.  Active connection being attacked after discovery of the Path-MTU

   Let us suppose an attacker attacks a TCP connection for which the
   PMTU has already been discovered.  In this case, as illustrated in
   Figure 1, the PMTU would be found to be 1500 bytes.  Figure 5 shows a
   possible packet exchange.

















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       Host 1                                           Host 2

   1.    -->    <SEQ=100><ACK=X><CTL=ACK><DATA=1460>    -->
   2.    -->    <SEQ=1560><ACK=X><CTL=ACK><DATA=1460>   -->
   3.    -->    <SEQ=3020><ACK=X><CTL=ACK><DATA=1460>   -->
   4.    -->    <SEQ=4480><ACK=X><CTL=ACK><DATA=1460>   -->
   5.        <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=68, TCPseq#=100 <---
   6.    <--        <SEQ=X><CTL=ACK><ACK=1560>          <--

   Figure 5: Active connection being attacked after discovery of PMTU

   As we assume the PMTU has already been discovered, we also assume
   both maxsizesent and maxsizeacked are equal to 1500.  We assume
   nsegrto is equal to zero, as there have been no segment timeouts.

   In lines 1, 2, 3, and 4, H1 sends four data segments to H2.  In line
   5, an attacker sends a forged ICMP packet to H1.  We assume the
   attacker is lucky enough to guess both the four-tuple that identifies
   the connection and a valid TCP sequence number.  As the Next-Hop MTU
   claimed in the ICMP "Packet Too Big" message (claimedmtu) is smaller
   than maxsizeacked, this packet is assumed to be performing Path-MTU
   Update.  Thus, the error message is recorded.

   In line 6, H1 receives an acknowledgement for the segment sent in
   line 1, before it times out.  At this point, the "pending error"
   condition is cleared, and the recorded ICMP "Packet Too Big" error
   message is ignored.  Therefore, the attack does not succeed.

A.5.  TCP peer attacked when sending small packets just after the three-
      way handshake

   This section analyzes an scenario in which a TCP peer that is sending
   small segments just after the connection has been established, is
   attacked.  The connection could be being used by protocols such as
   SMTP [34] and HTTP [35], for example, which usually behave like this.

   Figure 6 shows a possible packet exchange for such scenario.














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      Host 1                                         Host 2

   1.   -->          <SEQ=100><CTL=SYN>             -->
   2.   <--     <SEQ=X><ACK=101><CTL=SYN,ACK>       <--
   3.   -->      <SEQ=101><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK>        -->
   4.   -->  <SEQ=101><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK><DATA=100>  -->
   5.   <--      <SEQ=X+1><ACK=201><CTL=ACK>        <--
   6.   -->  <SEQ=201><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK><DATA=100>  -->
   7.   -->  <SEQ=301><ACK=X+1><CTL=ACK><DATA=100>  -->
   8.        <--- ICMP "Packet Too Big" MTU=150, TCPseq#=101 <---


   Figure 6: TCP peer attacked when sending small packets just after the
   three-way handshake

   nsegrto is initialized to zero.  Both maxsizesent and maxsizeacked
   are initialized to the minimum MTU for the internet protocol being
   used (68 for IPv4, and 1280 for IPv6).

   In lines 1 to 3 the three-way handshake takes place, and the
   connection is established.  At this point, the assumed Path-MTU for
   this connection is 4464.  In line 4, H1 sends a small segment (which
   results in a 140-byte packet) to H2. maxsizesent is thus set to 140.
   In line 5 this segment is acknowledged, and thus maxsizeacked is set
   to 140.

   In lines 6 and 7, H1 sends two small segments to H2.  In line 8,
   while the segments from lines 6 and 7 are still in flight to H2, an
   attacker sends a forged ICMP "Packet Too Big" error message to H1.
   Assuming the attacker is lucky enough to guess a valid TCP sequence
   number, this ICMP message will pass the TCP sequence number check.
   The Next-Hop MTU reported by the ICMP error message (claimedmtu) is
   then compared with maxsizesent.  As claimedmtu is larger than
   maxsizesent, the ICMP error message is silently discarded.
   Therefore, the attack does not succeed.


Appendix B.  Pseudo-code for the counter-measure for the blind
             performance-degrading attack

   This section contains a pseudo-code version of the counter-measure
   described in Section 7.2 for the blind performance-degrading attack
   described in Section 7.  It is meant as guidance for developers on
   how to implement this counter-measure.

   The pseudo-code makes use of the following variables, constants, and
   functions:




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   ack
      Variable holding the acknowledgement number contained in the TCP
      segment that has just been received.

   acked_packet_size
      Variable holding the packet size (data, plus headers) the ACK that
      has just been received is acknowledging.

   adjust_mtu()
      Function that adjusts the MTU for this connection, according to
      the ICMP "Packet Too Big" that was last received.

   claimedmtu
      Variable holding the Next-Hop MTU advertised by the ICMP "Packet
      Too Big" error message.

   claimedtcpseq
      Variable holding the TCP sequence number contained in the payload
      of the ICMP "Packet Too Big" message that has just been received
      or was last recorded.

   current_mtu
      Variable holding the assumed Path-MTU for this connection.

   drop_message()
      Function that performs the necessary actions to drop the ICMP
      message being processed.

   initial_mtu
      Variable holding the MTU for new connections, as explained in [5]
      and [9].

   maxsizeacked
      Variable holding the largest packet size (data, plus headers) that
      has so for been acked for this connection, as explained in
      Section 7.2

   maxsizesent
      Variable holding the largest packet size (data, plus headers) that
      has so for been sent for this connection, as explained in
      Section 7.2

   nsegrto
      Variable holding the number of times this segment has timed out,
      as explained in Section 7.2






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   packet_size
      Variable holding the size of the IP datagram being sent

   pending_message
      Variable (flag) that indicates whether there is a pending ICMP
      "Packet Too Big" message to be processed.

   save_message()
      Function that records the ICMP "Packet Too Big" message that has
      just been received.

   MINIMUM_MTU
      Constant holding the minimum MTU for the internet protocol in use
      (68 for IPv4, ad 1280 for IPv6.

   MAXSEGRTO
      Constant holding the number of times a given segment must timeout
      before an ICMP "Packet Too Big" error message can be honored.


   EVENT: New TCP connection

        current_mtu = initial_mtu;
        maxsizesent = MINIMUM_MTU;
        maxsizeacked = MINIMUM_MTU;
        nsegrto = 0;
        pending_message = 0;


   EVENT: Segment is sent
        if (packet_size > maxsizesent)
             maxsizesent = packet_size;


   EVENT: Segment is received

        if (acked_packet_size > maxsizeacked)
             maxsizeacked = acked_packet_size;

        if (pending_mesage)
             if (ack > claimedtcpseq){
                  pending_message = 0;
                  nsegrto = 0;
             }


   EVENT: ICMP "Packet Too Big" message is received




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        if (claimedtcpseq < SND.UNA || claimed_TCP_SEQ >= SND.NXT){
             drop_message();
        }

        else {
             if (claimedmtu >= maxsizesent || claimedmtu >= current_mtu)
                  drop_message();

             else {
                  if (claimedmtu > maxsizeacked){
                       adjust_mtu();
                       current_mtu = claimedmtu;
                       maxsizesent = MINIMUM_MTU;
                  }

                  else {
                       pending_message = 1;
                       save_message();
                  }
             }
        }


   EVENT: Segment times out

        nsegrto++;

        if (pending_message && nsegrto >= MAXSEGRTO){
             adjust_mtu();
             nsegrto = 0;
             pending_message = 0;
             maxsizeacked = claimedmtu;
             maxsizesent = MINIMUM_MTU;
             current_mtu = claimedmtu;
        }


   Notes:
      All comparisions between sequence numbers must be performed using
      sequence number arithmethic.
      The pseudo-code implements the mechanism described in Section 7.2,
      the TCP sequence number checking described in Section 4.1, and the
      validation check on the advertised Next-Hop MTU described in [5]
      and [9].







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Appendix C.  Advice and guidance to vendors

   Vendors are urged to contact NISCC (vulteam@niscc.gov.uk) if they
   think they may be affected by the issues described in this document.
   As the lead coordination center for these issues, NISCC is well
   placed to give advice and guidance as required.

   NISCC works extensively with government departments and agencies,
   commercial organizations and the academic community to research
   vulnerabilities and potential threats to IT systems especially where
   they may have an impact on Critical National Infrastructure's (CNI).

   Other ways to contact NISCC, plus NISCC's PGP public key, are
   available at http://www.uniras.gov.uk/vuls/ .


Appendix D.  Changes from previous versions of the draft

D.1.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-03

   o  Added references to existing implementations of the proposed
      counter-measures

   o  The discussion in Section 4 was improved

   o  The discussion in Section 5.2.1 was expanded and improved

   o  The proposed counter-measure for the attack against the PMTUD was
      improved and simplified

   o  Appendix B was added

   o  Miscellaneous editorial changes

D.2.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-02

   o  Fixed errors in Section 5.2.1

   o  The proposed counter-measure for the attack against the PMTUD
      mechanism was refined to allow quick discovery of the Path-MTU

   o  Appendix A was added so as to clarify the operation of the
      counter-measure for the attack against the PMTUD mechanism

   o  Added Appendix C

   o  Miscellaneous editorial changes




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D.3.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-01

   o  The document was restructured for easier reading

   o  A discussion of ICMPv6 was added in several sections of the
      document

   o  Added Section on Acknowledgement number checking"/>

   o  Added Section 4.3

   o  Added Section 7

   o  Fixed typo in the ICMP types, in several places

   o  Fixed typo in the TCP sequence number check formula

   o  Miscellaneous editorial changes

D.4.  Changes from draft-gont-tcpm-icmp-attacks-00

   o  Added a proposal to change the handling of the so-called ICMP hard
      errors during the synchronized states

   o  Added a summary of the relevant RFCs in several sections

   o  Miscellaneous editorial changes
























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Author's Address

   Fernando Gont
   Universidad Tecnologica Nacional
   Evaristo Carriego 2644
   Haedo, Provincia de Buenos Aires  1706
   Argentina

   Phone: +54 11 4650 8472
   Email: fernando@gont.com.ar









































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