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Examining ICMP Flaws
An anonymous reader writes "A recent internet-draft pointed out a number of security flaws in the design of the ICMP protocol. Most open source projects and vendors have addressed the flaws to some level, but this interesting article on KernelTrap examines the true extent of the problem, and how so far only OpenBSD has implemented all possible counter-measures. Theo de Raadt is quoted saying, "here we have a 20 year old protocol, a part of the Internet infrastructure that hasn't been touched in 10 years and we were all sure was right, and now is cast in doubt.""
The scary thing is that the parent is talking about ICMP without actually knowing what it is.
You see, this is one of the failures of the moderation system: when someone posts something like this, it seems intelligent because it mentions a lot of familiar things, but overally it's not even making sense. The problem is that moderators work like this:
Argument: check
Clear line of thinking: check
Windows comparison: check
The problem is that this checklist does not include VERIFYING THINGS like what ICMP is. This is how the parent got +5, insightful while it's one of the most misinformed posts i've seen in a while.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
How the heck did this get modded insightful?
ICMP runs on a different layer than all of the services you mentioned. ICMP is a network layer protocol (like IP and IPv6, also called "layer 3"), and all the protocols you mentioned are application layer (layer 7) protocols. There's no direct comparison to be made to any of the protocols (HTTP, SMB, FTP and NFS) you mentioned.
If you want to compare having ICMP in the kernel to other sinilar protocols, your best argument (if you can call it that) is that we should have *IP*, another layer 3 protocol, "running as an ordinary user process, not root, and especially not as a kernel process." Obviously, IP *is* included in the kernel, for plenty of good reasons. Comparing ICMP to application-layer protocols like HTTP holds no weight whatsoever, unless you're completely ignorant of network fundamentals.
How it got modded to +5 Insightful baffles me. I'd have thought this crowd would have a better handle on the basics.
I run OpenBSD stable, and some belligerent asshole stays up all night worrying about the best possible response to the latest threats. Sure, I will buy a CD http://openbsd.org/items.html#37.
And Theo, thank you for being a belligerent asshole for the good guys.