Executive brief
A vulnerability in the Linux internet services daemon (inetd) allows remote attackers to disrupt network services. By sending a specific sequence of network connection requests, an attacker can cause the system to stop responding to legitimate traffic. This results in a denial of service, preventing users from accessing hosted applications or services.
Technical details
The Linux inetd daemon is vulnerable to a denial of service attack involving the manipulation of TCP SYN and RST packets. An attacker can exploit this by flooding the service with connection requests that are immediately reset or left in a specific state, exhausting the daemon's ability to handle new connections. This is a network-based attack that requires no authentication and no user interaction. Successful exploitation results in the unavailability of all services managed by inetd. Modern Linux distributions have largely replaced inetd with xinetd or systemd, which are not affected by this specific legacy issue.
Affected products
- Linux Foundation Linux
Timeline
- 1997-11-01: disclosed