CVE-2016-10142

Summary

CVECVE-2016-10142
StatePUBLIC
Assigner[email protected]
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2017-01-14 07:59:00 UTC
Updated2023-11-07 02:29:00 UTC
DescriptionAn issue was discovered in the IPv6 protocol specification, related to ICMP Packet Too Big (PTB) messages. (The scope of this CVE is all affected IPv6 implementations from all vendors.) The security implications of IP fragmentation have been discussed at length in [RFC6274] and [RFC7739]. An attacker can leverage the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments to trigger the use of fragmentation in an arbitrary IPv6 flow (in scenarios in which actual fragmentation of packets is not needed) and can subsequently perform any type of fragmentation-based attack against legacy IPv6 nodes that do not implement [RFC6946]. That is, employing fragmentation where not actually needed allows for fragmentation-based attack vectors to be employed, unnecessarily. We note that, unfortunately, even nodes that already implement [RFC6946] can be subject to DoS attacks as a result of the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments. Let us assume that Host A is communicating with Host B and that, as a result of the widespread dropping of IPv6 packets that contain extension headers (including fragmentation) [RFC7872], some intermediate node filters fragments between Host B and Host A. If an attacker sends a forged ICMPv6 PTB error message to Host B, reporting an MTU smaller than 1280, this will trigger the generation of IPv6 atomic fragments from that moment on (as required by [RFC2460]). When Host B starts sending IPv6 atomic fragments (in response to the received ICMPv6 PTB error message), these packets will be dropped, since we previously noted that IPv6 packets with extension headers were being dropped between Host B and Host A. Thus, this situation will result in a DoS scenario. Another possible scenario is that in which two BGP peers are employing IPv6 transport and they implement Access Control Lists (ACLs) to drop IPv6 fragments (to avoid control-plane attacks). If the aforementioned BGP peers drop IPv6 fragments but still honor received ICMPv6 PTB error messages, an attacker could easily attack the corresponding peering session by simply sending an ICMPv6 PTB message with a reported MTU smaller than 1280 bytes. Once the attack packet has been sent, the aforementioned routers will themselves be the ones dropping their own traffic.

Risk And Classification

Problem Types: CWE-17

NVD Known Affected Configurations (CPE 2.3)

TypeVendorProductVersionUpdateEditionLanguage
Application Ietf Ipv6 - All All All
Application Ietf Ipv6 - All All All

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
myF5 support.f5.com
Public KB - SA43730 - 2018-04: Security Bulletin: Multiple vulnerabilities resolved in Pulse Connect Secure / Pulse Policy Secure 9.0R1 CONFIRM kb.pulsesecure.net
Juniper Junos ICMPv6 Fragment Processing Flaw Lets Remote Users Deny Service - SecurityTracker SECTRACK www.securitytracker.com
draft-ietf-6man-deprecate-atomfrag-generation-08 - Generation of IPv6 Atomic Fragments Considered Harmful MISC tools.ietf.org Third Party Advisory
RFC 8021 - Generation of IPv6 Atomic Fragments Considered Harmful MISC tools.ietf.org Third Party Advisory
IETF IPv6 Protocol CVE-2016-10142 Denial of Service Vulnerability BID www.securityfocus.com
Red Hat Customer Portal REDHAT rhn.redhat.com
support.f5.com/csp/article/K57211290 CONFIRM support.f5.com
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis
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