[AusNOG] Interesting - How a Router's Missed Range Check Nearly Crashed the Internet

[Mark McKibbin]

Mikrotik may be Latvian but the owner is a Texan (just like George
Bush).....explains everything.

 

Mark McKibbin

DCS Internet

P Please consider the trees that will die if you choose to print this
email

 

From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
[mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Skeeve Stevens
Sent: Monday, 23 February 2009 4:00 AM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net; NZNOG at list.waikato.ac.nz
Subject: [AusNOG] Interesting - How a Router's Missed Range Check Nearly
Crashed the Internet

 

>From the front page of Slashdot:

 

 

Barlaam writes "A bug by router vendor A (omitting a range check from a
critical field in the configuration interface) tickled a bug from router
vendor B (dropping BGP sessions when processing some ASPATH attributes
with length very close to 256), causing a ripple effect that caused
widespread global routing instability last week. The flaw lay dormant
until one of vendor A's systems was deployed in an autonomous system
whose ASN, modulo 256, was greater than 250. At that point, the Internet
was one typo away from disaster. Other router vendors, who were not
affected by the bug, happily propagated the trigger message to every
vulnerable system on the planet in about 30 seconds. Few people
appreciate how fragile and unsecured the Internet's trust-based critical
infrastructure really is - this is just the latest example." Vendor A,
in this case, is a Latvian router vendor called MikroTik.

 

 

Is this just the 4byte ASN thing from months ago or something new?

 

I knew there was a reason I hated Mikrotik's so much.

 

--

Skeeve Stevens, CEO/Technical Director

eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists

skeeve at eintellego.net / www.eintellego.net

Phone: 1300 753 383, Fax: (+612) 8572 9954

Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 / skype://skeeve

--

NOC, NOC, who's there?

 

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