TCP Maintenance and Minor                                     A. Ramaiah
Extensions Working Group                                      R. Stewart
Internet-Draft                                                  M. Dalal
Intended status: Standards Track                           Cisco Systems
Expires: January 9, 2008                                    July 8, 2007


         Improving TCP's Robustness to Blind In-Window Attacks
                    draft-ietf-tcpm-tcpsecure-08.txt

Status of this Memo

   By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
   applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 9, 2008.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).













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Abstract

   TCP has historically been considered protected against spoofed off-
   path packet injection attacks by relying on the fact that it is
   difficult to guess the 4-tuple (the source and destination IP
   addresses and the source and destination ports) in combination with
   the 32 bit sequence number(s).  A combination of increasing window
   sizes and applications using longer term connections (e.g.  H-323 or
   Border Gateway Protocol [RFC4271]) have left modern TCP
   implementations more vulnerable to these types of spoofed packet
   injection attacks.

   Many of these long term TCP applications tend to have predictable IP
   addresses and ports which makes it far easier for the 4-tuple to be
   guessed.  Having guessed the 4-tuple correctly, an attacker can
   inject a RST, SYN or DATA segment into a TCP connection by
   systematically guessing the sequence number of the spoofed segment to
   be in the current receive window.  This can cause the connection to
   either abort or possibly cause data corruption.  This document
   specifies small modifications to the way TCP handles inbound segments
   that can reduce the chances of a successful attack.






























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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.1.  Basic Attack Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.2.  Attack probabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   3.  Blind reset attack using the RST bit . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     3.1.  Description of the attack  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     3.2.  Mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.  Blind reset attack using the SYN bit . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.1.  Description of the attack  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.2.  Mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   5.  Blind data injection attack  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     5.1.  Description of the attack  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     5.2.  Mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   6.  ACK throttling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   7.  Backward Compatibility and Other considerations  . . . . . . . 16
   8.  Middlebox considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     8.1.  Middlebox that resend RST's  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     8.2.  Middleboxes that advance sequence numbers  . . . . . . . . 17
   9.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   10. IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   11. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   12. Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   13. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
     13.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
     13.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 26






















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1.  Introduction

   TCP [RFC0793] is widely deployed and the most common reliable end to
   end transport protocol used for data communication in today's
   Internet.  Yet when it was standardized over 20 years ago, the
   Internet, was a different place, lacking many of the threats that are
   now common.  The TCP spoofing attacks, which are seen in the Internet
   today, fall into this category.

   In a TCP spoofing attack, an off-path attacker crafts TCP packets by
   forging the IP source and destination addresses as well as the source
   and destination ports (commonly referred to as a 4-tuple value).  The
   targeted TCP endpoint will then associate such a packet with an
   existing TCP connection.  It needs to be noted that, guessing this
   4-tuple value is not always easy for an attacker.  But there are some
   applications (e.g.  BGP [RFC4271]) that have a tendency to use the
   same set(s) of ports on either endpoint making the odds of guessing
   correctly the 4-tuple value much easier.  When an attacker is
   successful in guessing the 4-tuple value, one of three types of
   injection attacks may be waged against a long-lived connection.

   RST -  Where an attacker injects a RST segment hoping to cause the
      connection to be torn down.

   SYN -  Where an attacker injects a SYN hoping to cause the receiver
      to believe the peer has restarted and so tear down the connection
      state.

   DATA -  Where an attacker tries to inject a DATA segment to corrupt
      the contents of the transmission.

   The mitigations described in this document SHOULD be implemented by
   TCP stacks.  Those mitigations have required and optional aspects
   that are further described below.

1.1.  Basic Attack Methodology

   Focusing upon the RST attack, we examine this attack in more detail
   to get an overview as to how it works and how this document addresses
   the issue.  For this attack the goal is for the attacker to cause one
   of the two endpoints of the connection to incorrectly tear down the
   connection state, effectively aborting the connection.  One of the
   important things to note is that, for the attack to succeed the RST
   needs to be in the valid receive window.  It also needs to be
   emphasized that the receive window is independent of the current
   congestion window of the TCP connection.  The attacker would try to
   forge many RST segments to try to cover the space of possible windows
   by putting out a packet in each potential window.  To do this the



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   attacker needs to have or guess several pieces of information namely:

   1) The 4-tuple value containing the IP address and TCP port number of
      both ends of the connection.  For one side (usually the server)
      guessing the port number is a trivial exercise.  The client side
      may or may not be easy for an attacker to guess depending on a
      number of factors, most notably the operating system and
      application involved.

   2) A sequence number that will be used in the RST.  This sequence
      number will be a starting point for a series of guesses to attempt
      to present a RST segment to a connection endpoint that would be
      acceptable to it.  Any random value may be used to guess the
      initial sequence number.

   3) The window size that the two endpoints are using.  This value does
      NOT have to be the exact window size since a smaller value used in
      lieu of the correct one will just cause the attacker to generate
      more segments before succeeding in his mischief.  Most modern
      operating systems have a default window size which usually is
      applied to most connections.  Some applications however may change
      the window size to better suit the needs of the application.  So
      often times the attacker, with a fair degree of certainty (knowing
      the application that is under attack), can come up with a very
      close approximation as to the actual window size in use on the
      connection.

   After assembling the above set of information the attacker begins
   sending spoofed TCP segments with the RST bit set and a guessed TCP
   sequence number.  Each time a new RST segment is sent, the sequence
   number guess is incremented by the window size.  The feasibility of
   this methodology (without mitigations) was first shown in [SITW].
   This is because [RFC0793] specifies that any RST within the current
   window is acceptable.  Also [I-D.ietf-tcpm-tcp-antispoof] talks about
   the probability of a successful attack with varying window sizes and
   bandwidth.

   A slight enhancement to the TCP's segment processing rules can be
   made which makes such an attack much more difficult to accomplish.
   If the receiver examines the incoming RST segment and validates that
   the sequence number exactly matches the sequence number that is next
   expected, then such an attack becomes much more difficult than
   outlined in [SITW] (i.e. the attacker would have to generate 1/2 the
   entire sequence space, on average).  This document will discuss the
   exact details of what needs to be changed within TCP's segment
   processing rules to mitigate all three types of attacks (RST, SYN and
   DATA).




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1.2.  Attack probabilities

   Every application has control of a number of factors that effect
   drastically the probability of a successful spoofing attack.  These
   factors include such things as:

   Window Size  - Normally settable by the application but often times
      defaulting to 32,768 or 65,535 depending upon the operating system
      ([Medina05]).

   Server Port number  - This value is normally a fixed value so that a
      client will know where to connect to the peer at.  Thus this value
      normally provides no additional protection.

   Client Port number  - This value may be a random ephemeral value, if
      so, this makes a spoofing attack more difficult.  There are some
      clients, however, that for whatever reason either pick a fixed
      client port or have a very guessable one (due to the range of
      ephemeral ports available with their operating system or other
      application considerations) for such applications a spoofing
      attack becomes less difficult.

   For the purposes of the rest of this discussion we will assume that
   the attacker knows the 4-tuple values.  This assumption will help us
   focus on the effects of the window size versus the number of TCP
   packets an attacker must generate.  This assumption will rarely be
   true in the real Internet since at least the client port number will
   provide us with some amount of randomness (depending on the operating
   system).

   To successfully inject a spoofed packet (RST, SYN or DATA), in the
   past, the entire sequence space (i.e. 2^32) was often considered
   available to make such an attack unlikely.  [SITW] demonstrated that
   this assumption was incorrect and that instead of [1/2 * 2^32]
   packets (assuming a random distribution) [1/2 * (2^32/window)]
   packets is required.

   Substituting numbers into this formula we see that for a window size
   of 32,768, an average of 65,536 packets would need to be transmitted
   in order to "spoof" a TCP segment that would be acceptable to a TCP
   receiver.  A window size of 65,535 reduces this even further to
   32,768 packets.  At today's access bandwidths an attack of that size
   is feasible.

   With rises in bandwidth to both the home and office, it can only be
   expected that the values for default window sizes will continue to
   rise in order to better take advantage of the newly available
   bandwidth.  It also needs to be noted that this attack can be



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   performed in a distributed fashion in order potentially gain access
   to more bandwidth.

   As we can see from the above discussion this weakness lowers the bar
   quite considerably for likely attacks.  But there is one additional
   dependency which is the duration of the TCP connection.  A TCP
   connection that lasts only a few brief packets, as often is the case
   for web traffic, would not be subject to such an attack since the
   connection may not be established long enough for an attacker to
   generate enough traffic.  However there is a set of applications such
   as BGP [RFC4271] which is judged to be potentially most affected by
   this vulnerability.  BGP relies on a persistent TCP session between
   BGP peers.  Resetting the connection can result in medium term
   unavailability due to the need to rebuild routing tables and route
   flapping; see [NISCC] for further details.

   For applications that can use the TCP MD5 option [RFC2385], such as
   BGP, that option makes the attacks described in this specification
   effectively impossible.  However, some applications or
   implementations may find that option expensive to implement.

   There are alternative protections against the threats that this
   document addresses.  For further details regarding the attacks and
   the existing techniques, please refer to draft
   [I-D.ietf-tcpm-tcp-antispoof]


























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2.  Terminology

   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 [RFC2119].  TCP
   terminology should be interpreted as described in [RFC0793].













































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3.  Blind reset attack using the RST bit

3.1.  Description of the attack

   As described in the introduction, it is possible for an attacker to
   generate a "RST" segment that would be acceptable to a TCP receiver
   by guessing "in-window" sequence numbers.  In particular [RFC0793],
   p37, states the following:

   "In all states except SYN-SENT, all reset (RST) segments are
   validated by checking their SEQ-fields [sequence numbers].  A reset
   is valid if its sequence number is in the window.  In the SYN-SENT
   state (a RST received in response to an initial SYN), the RST is
   acceptable if the ACK field acknowledges the SYN."

3.2.  Mitigation

   [RFC0793] currently requires handling of a segment with the RST bit
   when in a synchronized state to be processed as follows:

   1) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number is outside the
      current receive window (SEG.SEQ <= RCV.NXT || SEG.SEQ > RCV.NXT+
      RCV.WND) , silently drop the segment.

   2) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number is acceptable i.e.:
      (RCV.NXT <= SEG.SEQ < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND) then reset the connection.

   Instead, this document requires that implementations SHOULD implement
   the following steps in place of those specified in [RFC0793] (as
   listed above).

   A) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number is outside the
      current receive window, silently drop the segment.

   B) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number exactly matches the
      next expected sequence number (RCV.NXT), then TCP MUST reset the
      connection.

   C) If the RST bit is set and the sequence number does not exactly
      match the next expected sequence value, yet is within the current
      receive window (RCV.NXT < SEG.SEQ < RCV.NXT+RCV.WND), TCP MUST
      send an acknowledgment (challenge ACK):

      <SEQ=SND.NXT><ACK=RCV.NXT><CTL=ACK>







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      After sending the challenge ACK, TCP MUST drop the unacceptable
      segment and stop processing the incoming packet further.  Further
      segments destined to this connection will be processed as normal.

   The previous text, quoted from [RFC0793] pg 37 would thus become:

   In all states except SYN-SENT, all reset (RST) segments are validated
   by checking their SEQ-fields [sequence numbers].  A reset is valid if
   its sequence number exactly matches the next expected sequence
   number.  If the RST arrives and its sequence number field does NOT
   match the next expected sequence number but is within the window,
   then the receiver should generate an ACK.  In all other cases where
   the SEQ-field does not match and is outside the window, the receiver
   MUST silently discard the segment.

   In the SYN-SENT state (a RST received in response to an initial SYN),
   the RST is acceptable if the ACK field acknowledges the SYN.  In all
   other cases the receiver MUST silently discard the segment.

   With the above slight change to the TCP state machine, it becomes
   much harder for an attacker to generate an acceptable reset segment.

   In cases where the remote peer did generate a RST but it fails to
   meet the above criteria (the RST sequence number was within the
   window but NOT the exact expected sequence number) when the challenge
   ACK is sent back, it will no longer have the transmission control
   block (TCB) related to this connection and hence as per [RFC0793],
   the remote peer will send a second RST back.  The sequence number of
   the second RST is derived from the acknowledgment number of the
   incoming ACK.  This second RST, if it reaches the sender, will cause
   the connection to be aborted since the sequence number would now be
   an exact match.

   A valid RST received out-of-order would still generate a challenge
   ACK in response.  If this RST happens to be a genuine one, the other
   end would send an RST with an exact sequence number match which would
   cause the connection to be dropped.

   Note that the above mitigation may cause a non-amplification ACK
   exchange.  This concern is discussed in Section 9.











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4.  Blind reset attack using the SYN bit

4.1.  Description of the attack

   The analysis of the reset attack using the RST bit highlights another
   possible avenue for a blind attacker using a similar set of sequence
   number guessing.  Instead of using the RST bit an attacker can use
   the SYN bit with the exact same semantics to tear down a connection.

4.2.  Mitigation

   [RFC0793] currently requires handling of a segment with the SYN bit
   set in the synchronized state to be as follows:

   1) If the SYN bit is set and the sequence number is outside the
      expected window, send an ACK back to the sender.

   2) If the SYN bit is set and the sequence number is acceptable i.e.:
      (RCV.NXT <= SEG.SEQ <= RCV.NXT+RCV.WND) then send a RST segment to
      the sender.

   Instead, the handling of the SYN in the synchronized state SHOULD be
   performed as follows:

   A) 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 end sender 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 TCP endpoint 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.

   A spoofed SYN, on the other hand, will then have generated an
   additional ACK which the peer will discard as a duplicate ACK and



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   will not affect the established connection.

   Note that this mitigation does leave one corner case un-handled which
   will prevent the reset of a connection when it should be reset (i.e.
   it is a non-spoofed SYN wherein a peer really did restart).  This
   problem occurs when the restarting host chooses the exact same IP
   address and port number that it was using prior to its restart.  By
   chance the restarted host must also choose an initial sequence number
   of exactly (RCV.NXT - 1) of the remote TCP endpoint that is still in
   the established state.  Such a case would cause the receiver to
   generate a "challenge" ACK as described above.  But since the ACK
   would be within the outgoing connections window the inbound ACK would
   be acceptable, and the sender of the SYN will do nothing with the
   response ACK.  This sequence will continue as the SYN sender
   continually times out and retransmits the SYN until such time as the
   connection attempt fails.

   This corner case is a result of the [RFC0793] specification and is
   not introduced by these new requirements.

   Note that the above mitigation may cause a non-amplification ACK
   exchange.  This concern is discussed in Section 9.





























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5.  Blind data injection attack

5.1.  Description of the attack

   A third type of attack is also highlighted by both the RST and SYN
   attacks.  It is also possible to inject data into a TCP connection by
   simply guessing a sequence number within the current receive window
   of the victim.  The ACK value of any data segment is considered valid
   as long as it does not acknowledge data ahead of the next segment to
   send.  In other words an ACK value is acceptable if it is ((SND.UNA-
   (2^31-1)) <= SEG.ACK <= SND.NXT).  The (2^31 - 1) in the above
   inequality takes into account the fact that comparisons on TCP
   sequence and acknowledgement numbers is done using the modulo 32 bit
   arithmetic to accommodate the number wraparound.  This means that an
   attacker has to guess two ACK values with every guessed sequence
   number so that the chances of successfully injecting data into a
   connection are 1 in ((2^32 / RCV.WND) * 2).

   When an attacker successfully injects data into a connection the data
   will sit in the receiver's re-assembly queue until the peer sends
   enough data to bridge the gap between the RCV.NXT value and the
   injected data.  At that point one of two things will occur :

   a) A packet war will ensue with the receiver indicating that it has
      received data up until RCV.NXT (which includes the attackers data)
      and the sender sending an ACK with an acknowledgment number less
      than RCV.NXT.

   b) The sender will send enough data to the peer which will move
      RCV.NXT even further along past the injected data.

   Depending upon the TCP implementation in question and the TCP traffic
   characteristics at that time, data corruption may result.  In case
   (a) the connection will eventually be reset by one of the sides
   unless the sender produces more data that will transform the ACK war
   into case (b).  The reset will usually occur via User Time Out (UTO)
   (see section 4.2.3.5 of [RFC1122]).

   Note that the protections illustrated in this section neither cause
   an ACK war nor prevent one from occurring if data is actually
   injected into a connection.  The ACK war is a product of the attack
   itself and cannot be prevented (other than by preventing the data
   from being injected).

5.2.  Mitigation

   All TCP stacks SHOULD implement the following mitigation.  TCP stacks
   which implement this mitigation, requires that an additional input



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   check MUST be added to any incoming segment.  The ACK value is
   considered acceptable only if it is in the range of ((SND.UNA -
   MAX.SND.WND) <= SEG.ACK <= SND.NXT).  All incoming segments whose ACK
   value doesn't satisfy the above condition MUST be discarded silently.
   A new state variable MAX.SND.WND is defined as the largest window
   that the local sender has ever received from its peer.  This window
   may be scaled to a value larger than 65,535 bytes ([RFC1323]).  This
   small check will reduce the vulnerability to an attacker guessing a
   valid sequence number, since he/she not only must guess the in-window
   sequence number, but also guess a proper ACK value within a scoped
   range.  This mitigation reduces, but does not eliminate, the ability
   to generate false segments.  It does however reduce the probability
   that invalid data will be injected.

   Implementations can also chose to hard code the MAX.SND.WND value to
   the maximum permissible window size i.e., 65535 in the absence of
   window scaling.  In the presence of window scaling option the value
   becomes (MAX.SND.WND << Snd.Wind.Scale).

   This mitigation also helps in improving robustness on accepting
   spoofed FIN segments (FIN attacks).  Among other things, this
   mitigation requires that the attacker also needs to get the
   acknowledgment number to fall in the range mentioned above in order
   to successfully spoof a FIN segment leading to the closure of the
   connection.  Thus, this mitigation greatly improves the robustness to
   spoofed FIN segments.

   Note that the above mitigation may cause a non-amplification ACK
   exchange.  This concern is discussed in Section 9.






















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6.  ACK throttling

   In order to alleviate multiple RSTs/SYNs from triggering multiple
   challenge ACKs, an ACK throttling mechanism is suggested as follows :

   1) The system administrator can configure the number of challenge
      ACK's that can be sent out in a given interval.  For example, in
      any 5 second window, no more than 10 challenge ACK's should be
      sent.

   2) The values for both the time and number of ACK's SHOULD be tunable
      by the system administrator to accommodate different perceived
      levels of threat and/or system resources.

   It should be noted that these numbers are empirical in nature and
   have been obtained from the RST throttling mechanisms existing in
   some implementations.  Also note that no timer is needed to implement
   the above mechanism, instead a timestamp and a counter can be used.

   An implementation SHOULD include an ACK throttling mechanism to be
   conservative.  Currently there is no known bad behavior that can be
   attributed to the lack of ACK throttling, but as a general principle,
   if ever invoked, something incorrect is occurring and such a
   mechanism will act as a failsafe that protects both the sender and
   the network.

   An administrator who is more concerned about protecting his bandwidth
   and CPU utilization may set smaller ACK throttling values whereas an
   administrator who is more interested in faster cleanup of stale
   connections (i.e. concerned about excess TCP state) may decide to set
   a higher value thus allowing more RST's to be processed in any given
   time period.

   The time limit SHOULD be tunable to help timeout brute force attacks
   faster than a potential legitimate flood of RSTs.
















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7.  Backward Compatibility and Other considerations

   All of the new required mitigation techniques in this document are
   totally compatible with existing ([RFC0793]) compliant TCP
   implementations as this document introduces no new assumptions or
   conditions.

   There is a corner scenario in the above mitigations which will
   require more than one round trip time to successfully abort the
   connection as per the figure below.  This scenario is similar to the
   one in which the original RST was lost in the network.

          TCP A                                                 TCP B
   1.a. ESTAB        <-- <SEQ=300><ACK=101><CTL=ACK><DATA> <--  ESTAB
     b. (delayed)    ... <SEQ=400><ACK=101><CTL=ACK><DATA> <--  ESTAB
     c. (in flight)  ... <SEQ=500><ACK=101><CTL=RST>       <--  CLOSED
   2.   ESTAB        --> <SEQ=101><ACK=400><CTL=ACK>       -->  CLOSED
       (ACK for 1.a)
                     ... <SEQ=400><ACK=0><CTL=RST>         <--  CLOSED
   3.   CHALLENGE    --> <SEQ=101><ACK=400><CTL=ACK>       -->  CLOSED
        (for 1.c)
                     ... <SEQ=400><ACK=0><CTL=RST>         <--  RESPONSE
   4.a. ESTAB        <-- <SEQ=400><ACK=101><CTL=ACK><DATA> 1.b reaches A
     b. ESTAB        --> <SEQ=101><ACK=500><CTL=ACK>
     c. (in flight)  ... <SEQ=500><ACK=0><CTL=RST>         <--  CLOSED
   5.   RESPONSE arrives at A, but dropped since its outside of window.
   6.   ESTAB        <-- <SEQ=500><ACK=0><CTL=RST>         4.c reaches A
   7.   CLOSED                                                   CLOSED

   For the mitigation to be maximally effective against the
   vulnerabilities discussed in this document, both ends of the TCP
   connection need to have the fix.  Although, having the mitigations at
   one end might prevent that end from being exposed to the attack, the
   connection is still vulnerable at the other end.

















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8.  Middlebox considerations

8.1.  Middlebox that resend RST's

   Consider a middlebox M-B tracking connections between two TCP end
   hosts E-A and E-C.  If E-C sends a RST with a sequence number that is
   within the window but not an exact match to reset the connection and
   M-B does not have the fix recommended in this document, it may clear
   the connection and forward the RST to E-A saving an incorrect
   sequence number.  If E-A does not have the fix the connection would
   get cleared as required.  However if E-A does have the required fix,
   it will send a challenge ACK to E-C.  M-B, being a middlebox, may
   intercept this ACK and resend the RST on behalf of E-C with the old
   sequence number.  This RST will, again, not be acceptable and may
   trigger a challenge ACK.

   The above situation may result in a RST/ACK war.  However, we believe
   that if such a case exists in the Internet, the middle box design
   does not comply to [RFC0793].  [RFC0793] dictates that the sequence
   number of a RST has to be derived from the acknowledgment number of
   the incoming ACK segment.  It is outside the scope of this document
   to suggest mitigations to the ill-behaved middleboxes.

   Consider a similar scenario where the RST from M-B to E-A gets lost,
   E-A will continue to hold the connection and E-A might send an ACK an
   arbitrary time later after the connection state was destroyed at M-B.
   For this case, M-B will have to cache the RST for an arbitrary amount
   of time till until it is confirmed that the connection has been
   cleared at E-A.

8.2.  Middleboxes that advance sequence numbers

   Some middleboxes may compute RST sequence numbers at the higher end
   of the acceptable window.  The scenario is the same as the earlier
   case, but in this case instead of sending the cached RST, the
   middlebox (M-B) sends a RST that computes its sequence number as the
   sum of the acknowledgement field in the ACK and the window advertised
   by the ACK that was sent by E-A to challenge the RST as depicted
   below.  The difference in the sequence numbers between step 1 and 2
   below is due to data lost in the network.











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      TCP A                                                   Middlebox

   1. ESTABLISHED  <-- <SEQ=500><ACK=100><CTL=RST>          <--  CLOSED

   2. ESTABLISHED  --> <SEQ=100><ACK=300><WND=500><CTL=ACK> -->  CLOSED

   3. ESTABLISHED  <-- <SEQ=800><ACK=100><CTL=RST>          <--  CLOSED

   4. ESTABLISHED  --> <SEQ=100><ACK=300><WND=500><CTL=ACK> -->  CLOSED

   5. ESTABLISHED  <-- <SEQ=800><ACK=100><CTL=RST>          <--  CLOSED

   Although the authors are not aware of an implementation that does the
   above, it could be mitigated by implementing the ACK throttling
   mechanism described earlier.




































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9.  Security Considerations

   These changes to the TCP state machine do NOT protect an
   implementation from on-path attacks.  It also needs to be emphasized
   that while mitigations within this document make it harder for off-
   path attackers to inject segments, it does NOT make it impossible.
   The only way to fully protect a TCP connection from both on and off
   path attacks is by using either IPSEC-AH [RFC4302] or IPSEC-ESP
   [RFC4303].

   Implementers also should be aware that the attacks detailed in this
   specification are not the only attacks available to an off-path
   attacker and that the counter measures described herein are not a
   comprehensive defense against such attacks.

   In particular, administrators should be aware that forged ICMP
   messages provide off-path attackers the opportunity to disrupt
   connections or degrade service.  Such attacks may be subject to even
   less scrutiny than the TCP attacks addressed here, especially in
   stacks not tuned for hostile environments.  It is important to note
   that some ICMP messages, validated or not, are key to the proper
   function of TCP.  Those ICMP messages used to properly set the path
   maximum transmission unit are the most obvious example.  There are a
   variety of ways to choose which, if any, ICMP messages to trust in
   the presence of off-path attackers and choosing between them depends
   on the assumptions and guarantees developers and administrators can
   make about their network.  This specification does not attempt to do
   more than note this and related issues.

   In any case, this RFC details only part of a complete strategy to
   prevent off-path attackers from disrupting services that use TCP.
   Administrators and implementers should consider the other attack
   vectors and determine appropriate mitigations in securing their
   systems.

   Another notable consideration is that a reflector attack is possible
   with the required RST/SYN mitigation techniques.  In this attack, an
   off-path attacker can cause a victim to send an ACK segment for each
   spoofed RST/SYN segment that lies within the current receive window
   of the victim.  It should be noted, however, that this does not cause
   any amplification since the attacker must generate a segment for each
   one that the victim will generate.









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10.  IANA Considerations

   This document contains no IANA considerations.
















































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11.  Contributors

   Mitesh Dalal and Amol Khare of Cisco Systems came up with the
   solution for the RST/SYN attacks.  Anantha Ramaiah and Randall
   Stewart of Cisco Systems discovered the data injection vulnerability
   and together with Patrick Mahan and Peter Lei of Cisco Systems found
   solutions for the same.  Paul Goyette, Mark Baushke, Frank
   Kastenholz, Art Stine and David Wang of Juniper Networks provided the
   insight that apart from RSTs, SYNs could also result in formidable
   attacks.  Shrirang Bage of Cisco Systems, Qing Li and Preety Puri of
   Wind River Systems and Xiaodan Tang of QNX Software along with the
   folks above helped in ratifying and testing the interoperability of
   the suggested solutions.

   ACK throttling was introduced to this document by combining the
   suggestions from the tcpm working group.



































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12.  Acknowledgments

   Special thanks to Mark Allman, Ted Faber, Steve Bellovin, Vern
   Paxson, Allison Mankin, Sharad Ahlawat, Damir Rajnovic, John Wong,
   Joe Touch, Alfred Hoenes and other members of the tcpm WG for
   suggestions and comments.













































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13.  References

13.1.  Normative References

   [RFC0793]  Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
              RFC 793, September 1981.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC4302]  Kent, S., "IP Authentication Header", RFC 4302,
              December 2005.

   [RFC4303]  Kent, S., "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)",
              RFC 4303, December 2005.

13.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-tcpm-tcp-antispoof]
              Touch, J., "Defending TCP Against Spoofing Attacks",
              draft-ietf-tcpm-tcp-antispoof-06 (work in progress),
              February 2007.

   [Medina05]
              Medina, A., Allman, M., and S. Floyd, "Measuring the
              Evolution of Transport Protocols in the Internet. ACM
              Computer Communication Review, 35(2), April 2005.
              http://www.icir.org/mallman/papers/tcp-evo-ccr05.ps
              (figure 6)".

   [NISCC]    NISCC, "NISCC Vulnerability Advisory 236929 -
              Vulnerability Issues in TCP".

   [RFC1122]  Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
              Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122, October 1989.

   [RFC1323]  Jacobson, V., Braden, B., and D. Borman, "TCP Extensions
              for High Performance", RFC 1323, May 1992.

   [RFC2385]  Heffernan, A., "Protection of BGP Sessions via the TCP MD5
              Signature Option", RFC 2385, August 1998.

   [RFC3562]  Leech, M., "Key Management Considerations for the TCP MD5
              Signature Option", RFC 3562, July 2003.

   [RFC4271]  Rekhter, Y., Li, T., and S. Hares, "A Border Gateway
              Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271, January 2006.




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   [SITW]     Watson, P., "Slipping in the Window: TCP Reset attacks,
              Presentation at 2004 CanSecWest
              http://www.cansecwest.com/archives.html".
















































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Authors' Addresses

   Anantha Ramaiah
   Cisco Systems
   170 Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Phone: +1 (408) 525-6486
   Email: ananth@cisco.com


   Randall R. Stewart
   Cisco Systems
   4875 Forest Drive
   Suite 200
   Columbia, SC  29206
   USA

   Phone: +1 (803) 345-0369
   Email: rrs@cisco.com


   Mitesh Dalal
   Cisco Systems
   170 Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Phone: +1 (408) 853-5257
   Email: mdalal@cisco.com




















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Full Copyright Statement

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