Executive brief
A classic vulnerability affects various operating systems' ability to handle network diagnostic signals known as pings. By sending a specially crafted, oversized network packet, an attacker can cause the target computer or server to crash or freeze. This results in a denial of service, potentially disrupting business operations and network availability.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a classic buffer overflow or improper input validation issue in the IP fragmentation reassembly process. When an ICMP echo request (ping) packet is fragmented and exceeds the maximum IP packet size of 65,535 bytes, the receiving operating system may crash, reboot, or hang during reassembly. This is a network-based attack that requires no authentication or user interaction. An attacker can remotely trigger a denial of service (DoS) against any vulnerable system reachable via ICMP. Most modern operating systems have long since patched this by implementing checks on the total size of reassembled IP packets.
Affected products
- Multiple Vendors Multiple Operating Systems
Timeline
- 1996-12-18: disclosed: Initial publication date in NVD