Re: Hacking a Personal Computer via E-mail

• To: Rolf Weber <weber@iez.com>
• Subject: Re: Hacking a Personal Computer via E-mail
• From: Steven Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
• Date: Thu, 09 May 1996 14:08:15 -0400
• cc: cwg@DeepEddy.Com (Chris Garrigues), www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu (www-security)

	 > Well...if it weren't for little details like timeout values, I suppo
	se....
	 > 
	 > You do realize that you can't even run TCP over two satelite hops be
	cause the latency is greater than the timeouts, don't you?
	 > 

	 as said, i nerver did it, but i was told by private mail it's
	 been done.

Whether or not it's feasible depends on the TCP implementation.  While
I've certainly seen PC stacks that give up after a few seconds, modern
UNIX-based TCPs can last a fair number of minutes.  RFC 1122 requires
a timeout of at least 100 seconds before giving up.  According to
TCP/IP Illustrated Vol II, 4.4bsd's TCP waits at least 500 seconds
before declaring a connection dead.

Btw -- I know someone who's implemented it.  ``Lousy latencies but
a big MTU....''

		--Steve Bellovin

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