On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 03:14:11AM -0800, Vishwas Manral wrote:
> Hi Brian,
> 
> Though there are no requirements as you said about TCP header being
> seen, we know of issues that have happened in IPv4. By leaving the same
> in IPv6 we could very easily be inviting further simpler attacks. 
> 
> By not seeing the TCP field, the level of granularity considerably
> reduces for "firewalling" and other application level tweaks that are
> now done over the internet.

Right. So on the receiving end it's tempting to simply discard a packet
if fragments overlap. However, at least in theory, a genuine packet
could be sent with overlapping fragments since not forbidden.

Or should I simply assume that it must be some kind of attack if they
overlap? No sane operating system would send overlapping fragments...

Stig

> Is there a reason we should not specify such a limit? Backward
> compatibility, etc?
> 
> Thanks,
> Vishwas
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
> Brian E Carpenter
> Sent: Friday, November 25, 2005 4:25 PM
> To: Stig Venaas
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: IPv6 and Tiny Fragments
> 
> Stig Venaas wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 12:53:37AM -0800, Vishwas Manral wrote:
> > 
> >>Hi Janos,
> >>
> >>I think that is the minimum Link MTU and not the smallest size
> non-last
> >>fragment.
> >>
> >>Can you point me to the RFC/ draft which says what you stated?
> > 
> > 
> > Yes, I believe that is the minimum link MTU. So, obviously one
> fragment
> > might be smaller. I haven't seen anything say which fragment
> (reasonable
> > that it is the last, but haven't seen anything saying it must be), and
> > nothing prohibiting leaving several fragments smaller.
>  >
> > Also, there is sadly nothing saying overlapping fragments are not
> > allowed.
> 
> I suppose people writing code are assumed to exercise common sense,
> e.g. make the first fragment as large as possible and don't overlap
> fragments. But neither is required to make reassembly work. (Nor
> is in-order reception of fragments required.)
> 
> It isn't a requirement in the Internet that intermediate systems can
> see the transport header, so none of this seems to me to be a bug
> in RFC 2460. The Unfragmentable Part definition there seems correct
> to me.
> 
>      Brian
> 
> 
> 

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