https://kb.cert.org/vuls/id/199397 discusses 4 vulnerabilities in the
definitions of tunneling protocols, which may be implemented in Open
Source software, though they don't list any open source implementations
as affected yet in the Vendor Information section.

The CERT note currently states:

Vulnerability Note VU#199397
Original Release Date: 2025-01-17 | Last Revised: 2025-01-17

Overview
--------

Tunnelling protocols are an essential part of the Internet and form
much of the backbone that modern network infrastructure relies on
today. One limitation of these protocols is that they do not
authenticate and/or encrypt traffic. Though this limitation exists,
IPsec can be implemented to help prevent attacks. However,
implementation of these protocols have been executed poorly in some
areas.

For the latest security findings from the researchers at the
DistriNet-KU Leuven research group, please refer to:
https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/usenix2025-tunnels.pdf

Description
-----------

Researchers at the DistriNet-KU Leuven research group have discovered
millions of vulnerable Internet systems that accept unauthenticated
IPIP, GRE, 4in6, or 6in4 traffic. This can be considered a
generalization of the vulnerability in VU#636397 : IP-in-IP protocol
routes arbitrary traffic by default (CVE-2020-10136). The exposed
systems can be abused as one-way proxies, enable an adversary to spoof
the source address of packets (CWE-290 Authentication Bypass by
Spoofing), or permit access to an organization's private
network. Vulnerable systems can also facilitate Denial-of-Service
(DoS) attacks. Two types of DoS attacks exploiting this vulnerability
can amplify traffic: one concentrates traffic in time
("Tunneled-Temporal Lensing"), and the other can loop packets between
vulnerable systems, resulting in an amplification factor of at least
13- and 75-fold, respectively. Additionally, the researchers
discovered an Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS), where the
outgoing bandwidth of a vulnerable system is drained, raising the cost
of operations if hosted by a third-party cloud service provider.

Impact
------

An adversary can abuse these security vulnerabilities to create
one-way proxies and spoof source IPv4/6 addresses. Vulnerable systems
may also allow access to an organization's private network or be
abused to perform DDoS attacks.

Solution
--------

See the "Defences" section in the researcher's publication
https://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/usenix2025-tunnels.pdf

Acknowledgements
----------------

Thanks to the researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Angelos Beitis of the
DistriNet-KU Leuven research group for the initial discovery and
research. This document was written by Ben Koo.



CVE-2024-7595 GRE and GRE6 Protocols (RFC2784) do not validate or
verify the source of a network packet, allowing an attacker to route
arbitrary traffic via an exposed network interface that can lead to
spoofing, access control bypass, and other unexpected network
behaviors. This can be considered similar to CVE-2020-10136.

CVE-2024-7596 Proposed Generic UDP Encapsulation (GUE) (IETF
draft-ietf-intarea-gue*) does not validate or verify the source of a
network packet, allowing an attacker to route arbitrary traffic via an
exposed network interface that can lead to spoofing, access control
bypass, and other unexpected network behaviors. This can be considered
similar to CVE-2020-10136.

*Note: GUE Draft is expired and no longer canonical.

CVE-2025-23018 The IPv4-in-IPv6 and IPv6-in-IPv6 protocols (RFC2473)
do not require the validation or verification of the source of a
network packet, allowing an attacker to route arbitrary traffic via an
exposed network interface that can lead to spoofing, access control
bypass, and other unexpected network behaviors. This can be considered
similar to CVE-2020-10136.

CVE-2025-23019 The IPv6-in-IPv4 protocol (RFC4213) does not require
authentication of incoming packets, allowing an attacker to route
traffic via an exposed network interface that can lead to spoofing,
access control bypass, and other unexpected network behaviors.

Note: CVE-2024-7595, CVE-2024-7596, and CVE-2025-23018 are considered
similar to CVE-2020-10136 in that they highlight the inherent weakness
that these protocols do not validate or verify the source of a network
packet. These distinct CVEs are meant to specify the different
protocols in question that are vulnerable.

For reference: (CVE-2020-10136) Multiple products that implement the
IP Encapsulation within IP (IPIP) standard (RFC 2003, STD 1)
decapsulate and route IP-in-IP traffic without any validation, which
could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to route arbitrary
traffic via an exposed network interface and lead to spoofing, access
control bypass, and other unexpected network behaviors.

References

    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-intarea-gue/
    https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6169.html
    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2784
    https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-10136

See the Vendor Information section of the note at
 https://kb.cert.org/vuls/id/199397
for the latest information from the various implementations.

--
        -Alan Coopersmith-                 alan.coopersm...@oracle.com
         Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris

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