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On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 02:58:00AM +0000, Patrick Schleizer wrote:
> "Off-Path TCP Exploits: Global Rate Limit Considered Dangerous"
> 
> "In  a  nutshell,  the  vulnerability  allows  a  blind
> off-path  attacker  to  infer  if  any  two  arbitrary  hosts  on
> the Internet are communicating using a TCP connection.
> Further, if the connection is present, such an off-path at-
> tacker can also infer the TCP sequence numbers in use,
> from  both  sides  of  the  connection;  this  in  turn  allows
> the attacker to cause connection termination and perform
> data injection attacks.  We illustrate how the attack can
> be leveraged to disrupt or degrade the privacy guarantees
> of an anonymity network such as Tor, and perform web
> connection  hijacking.   Through  extensive  experiments,
> we show that the attack is fast and reliable.  On average,
> it takes about 40 to 60 seconds to finish and the success
> rate is 88% to 97%."
> 
> https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/08/10/sec16_tcp_pure_offpath.pdf
> 
> https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-5696
> 
> #####
> 
> Said to be fixed in linux 4.7, which is not yet available from any
> package sources.
> 
> The often quoted workaround for now:
> 
> /etc/sysctl.conf
> net.ipv4.tcp_challenge_ack_limit = 999999999
> sysctl -p
> 
> So it would also suffice if that fix was applied in sys-net?
> 
> Should a Qubes security upgrade apply this workaround?

I'm not sure if I understand it fully, but isn't it required for the
attacker to reach both end of the connection directly? On Qubes, every
VM (besides sys-net) is behind NAT, so this isn't possible.

Also, IIUC, the worst what can happen is off-path attacker performing
some attacks normally requiring being in-path. Something that using
properly encrypted/authenticated protocols guard against already.
Otherwise using any public wifi (which is much more common case than
this attack) could be fatal.

- -- 
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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