(copy of mail sent to tcpdump.gov)

        I have just noticed and fixed a rather obscure
        and exploitable DoS against tcpdump.

        If someone spoof an IP packet with an header
        length of 0 (ip_hl=0) (or any value bigger
        than the total ip+(tcp/udp) packet) and
        the ip_protocol of the packet is set to 4,
        tcpdump will dumpcore.

        why ? simple. Let's go in print-ip.c

        the header lenght is calculated this way:

        hlen = ip->ip_hl * 4;

        If the packet is spoofed and ip_hl=0 or very
        big value, hlen will contains 0.

        then...

        cp = (const u_char *)ip + hlen;
 cp will points on the beginning of the IP
        packet, not inside on the data after the
        header.

        If the IP protocol is 4 then we jump to:

        case 4:
        /* DVMRP multicast tunnel (ip-in-ip encapsulation)
*/
(...)
                        ip_print(cp, len);
(...)
                        break;

        As cp=ip, we build a recursive loop to ip_print
        which will smatch the stack in no way.

        Here is my patch. (i was not specialy
        inspired for the error message)

        Hope you can fix this ASAP.

        note: I have build an exploit. AFAIK it only
        works if the computer running tcpdump is the
        same ethernet segment than the attacker as
        most routers will drope an IP packet with a ip_hl
        lower than 5.

        Some people depend on tcpdump feeding an analyzer
        script to protect their network, that's why
     I think this DoS should be taken seriously.

--- tcpdump-3.4/print-ip.c      Fri Aug 20 16:00:51 1999
+++ tcpdump-3.4-p1/print-ip.c   Fri Aug 20 16:04:32 1999
@@ -374,6 +374,10 @@
                (void)printf("truncated-ip %d", length);
                return;
        }
+       if (ip->ip_hl < 5) {
+               (void)printf("ip_hl < 5 (%d)", ip->ip_hl);
+               return;
+       }
        hlen = ip->ip_hl * 4;

        len = ntohs(ip->ip_len);

        regards,
        Francois

Francois Baligant            * *       EuroNet Internet
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