Bugzilla – Bug 1020078
VUL-2: CVE-2016-10142: kernel: ipv6 legacy fragmentation attacks
Last modified: 2017-01-16 16:34:20 UTC
https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2016-10142 An issue was discovered in the IPv6 protocol specification, related to ICMP Packet Too Big (PTB) messages. (The scope of this CVE is all affected IPv6 implementations from all vendors.) The security implications of IP fragmentation have been discussed at length in [RFC6274] and [RFC7739]. An attacker can leverage the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments to trigger the use of fragmentation in an arbitrary IPv6 flow (in scenarios in which actual fragmentation of packets is not needed) and can subsequently perform any type of fragmentation-based attack against legacy IPv6 nodes that do not implement [RFC6946]. That is, employing fragmentation where not actually needed allows for fragmentation-based attack vectors to be employed, unnecessarily. We note that, unfortunately, even nodes that already implement [RFC6946] can be subject to DoS attacks as a result of the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments. Let us assume that Host A is communicating with Host B and that, as a result of the widespread dropping of IPv6 packets that contain extension headers (including fragmentation) [RFC7872], some intermediate node filters fragments between Host B and Host A. If an attacker sends a forged ICMPv6 PTB error message to Host B, reporting an MTU smaller than 1280, this will trigger the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments from that moment on (as required by [RFC2460]). When Host B starts sending IPv6 atomic fragments (in response to the received ICMPv6 PTB error message), these packets will be dropped, since we previously noted that IPv6 packets with extension headers were being dropped between Host B and Host A. Thus, this situation will result in a DoS scenario. Another possible scenario is that in which two BGP peers are employing IPv6 transport and they implement Access Control Lists (ACLs) to drop IPv6 fragments (to avoid control-plane attacks). If the aforementioned BGP peers drop IPv6 fragments but still honor received ICMPv6 PTB error messages, an attacker could easily attack the corresponding peering session by simply sending an ICMPv6 PTB message with a reported MTU smaller than 1280 bytes. Once the attack packet has been sent, the aforementioned routers will themselves be the ones dropping their own traffic. References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools By selecting these links, you will be leaving NIST webspace. We have provided these links to other web sites because they may have information that would be of interest to you. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not, from this page. There may be other web sites that are more appropriate for your purpose. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these sites. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned on these sites. Please address comments about this page to nvd@nist.gov. External Source: MISC Name: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8021 Hyperlink: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8021 External Source: MISC Name: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6man-deprecate-atomfrag-generation-08 Hyperlink: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-6man-deprecate-atomfrag-generation-08
This CVE describes an "undesirable feature" of the IPv6 protocol specification RFC 2460. The vulnerability is described to affect all standard compliant implementations, which may include the SUSE and openSUSE kernels. As with other protocol level level issues, the decision was taken to not address this issue with a security update at this time, as it would make the kernel IPv6 implementation non non-compliant. Remediation options (checks, filter implementations) or compatible work-arounds in the IPv6 implementation of the Linux kernel may be considered for a future update. A revision of the IPv6 specification, as indicated as desired by RFC 8021, will likewise be considered for future versions.