Executive brief
A vulnerability exists in the way certain operating systems handle fragmented internet traffic. By sending specially crafted data packets, an attacker can cause a target system to crash or become unresponsive. This results in a denial of service, potentially disrupting business operations and network availability.
Technical details
The Nestea vulnerability is a denial of service attack that exploits the IP fragmentation reassembly process. It is a variation of the 'teardrop' attack, where an attacker sends overlapping IP fragments with specific offset values that cause an integer underflow or improper boundary checking during reassembly. When the target operating system attempts to rebuild the original packet, the malformed fragments cause the kernel to crash or hang. This is a network-based attack that requires no authentication and can be executed remotely against vulnerable TCP/IP stacks.
Affected products
- Linux linux_kernel
Timeline
- 1998-04-01: disclosed: Initial publication date