[tor-relays] 90% of exits vulnerable to TCP off-path attack

Zack Weinberg zackw at cmu.edu
Fri Aug 12 16:01:03 UTC 2016


On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 11:27 AM,  <starlight.2016q3 at binnacle.cx> wrote:
> RFC-5961
> CVE-2016-5696
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/10/linux_tor_users_open_corrupted_communications/
> FYI all

Tor's use of TLS _should_ mean that the worst an attacker can do here
is denial-of-service.  The Register article suggests that they might
also be able to force the use of specific exit relays (by disrupting
connections that don't go through those relays) but weaponizing that
against specific users (rather than everyone trying to use an exit the
attacker doesn't like) strikes me as nontrivial.

Also, if you read the paper, raising the global rate limit (as
suggested by the reg. article) doesn't help; it only slows the
attacker down a little.

Right now I think one should not panic and should wait for the kernel
people to do a proper fix.

zw


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