CVE-2023-52881 — tcp: do not accept ACK of bytes we never sent

Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

tcp: do not accept ACK of bytes we never sent

This patch is based on a detailed report and ideas from Yepeng Pan and Christian Rossow.

ACK seq validation is currently following RFC 5961 5.2 guidelines:

The ACK value is considered acceptable only if it is in the range of ((SND.UNA - MAX.SND.WND) <= SEG.ACK <= SND.NXT). All incoming segments whose ACK value doesn't satisfy the above condition MUST be discarded and an ACK sent back. It needs to be noted that RFC 793 on page 72 (fifth check) says: "If the ACK is a duplicate (SEG.ACK < SND.UNA), it can be ignored. If the ACK acknowledges something not yet sent (SEG.ACK > SND.NXT) then send an ACK, drop the segment, and return". The "ignored" above implies that the processing of the incoming data segment continues, which means the ACK value is treated as acceptable. This mitigation makes the ACK check more stringent since any ACK < SND.UNA wouldn't be accepted, instead only ACKs that are in the range ((SND.UNA - MAX.SND.WND) <= SEG.ACK <= SND.NXT) get through.

This can be refined for new (and possibly spoofed) flows, by not accepting ACK for bytes that were never sent.

This greatly improves TCP security at a little cost.

I added a Fixes: tag to make sure this patch will reach stable trees, even if the 'blamed' patch was adhering to the RFC.

tp->bytes_acked was added in linux-4.2

Following packetdrill test (court…

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CVE-2023-52881 — tcp: do not accept ACK of bytes we never sent