Re: DO NOT USE THAT PATCH (Re: IP firewalling bugs)

der Mouse (mouse@Collatz.McRCIM.McGill.EDU)
Wed, 23 Aug 1995 15:59:42 -0400

>>         Send an IP fragment 0 acceptable to the firewall
>>         Send an IP fragment at offset 8 to rewrite most of the header
>>                 and all the data
> that isn't the main bug.  sigh

Seems to me that there's no reason to use the "new" data rather than
the "old" data when a new fragment arrives that overlaps
already-collected data.  They're supposed to be the same; any
difference indicates that at least one of them is definitely corrupted
in a way that beat the checksum, or else you're under attack.  In
either case, dropping both the incoming packet and the collected
fragments is probably the best response, seems to me.  If you don't
want to compare the bytes, then just make sure old data takes
precedence over new.  (But comparing the bytes when there's overlap is
probably cheap enough to do; the only way it will happen in normal use
is when a fragmented datagram is retransmitted.)

                                        der Mouse

                            mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu