ipsec-tools and iputils contain a remote DoS vulnerability — GLSA 200404-17

racoon, which is included in the ipsec-tools and iputils packages in Portage, does not check the length of ISAKMP headers. Attackers may be able to craft an ISAKMP header of sufficient length to consume all available system resoources, causing a Denial of Service.

Affected packages

net-firewall/ipsec-tools on the amd64 architecture
Affected versions < 0.3.1
Unaffected versions >= 0.3.1
net-misc/iputils on the ppc amd64 ppc64 s390 architecture
Affected versions = 021109-r1
Unaffected versions = 021109-r3

Background

From http://ipsec-tools.sourceforge.n et/

"IPsec-Tools is a port of KAME's IPsec utilities to the Linux-2.6 IPsec implementation."

iputils is a collection of network monitoring tools, including racoon, ping and ping6.

Description

When racoon receives an ISAKMP header, it allocates memory based on the length of the header field. Thus, an attacker may be able to cause a Denial of Services by creating a header that is large enough to consume all available system resources.

Impact

This vulnerability may allow an attacker to remotely cause a Denial of Service.

Workaround

A workaround is not currently known for this issue. All users are advised to upgrade to the latest version of the affected package.

Resolution

ipsec-tools users should upgrade to version 0.2.5 or later:

 # emerge sync

 # emerge -pv ">=net-firewall/ipsec-tools-0.3.1"
 # emerge ">=net-firewall/ipsec-tools-0.3.1"

iputils users should upgrade to version 021109-r3 or later:

 # emerge sync

 # emerge -pv ">=net-misc/iputils-021109-r3"
 # emerge ">=net-misc/iputils-021109-r3"

References

Release date
April 24, 2004

Latest revision
April 24, 2004: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries