Dear Linux Developers,
We're reaching out to you as part of the disclosure process of our research.
In our research, which we will present at IEEE Security & Privacy in May 2024, we found that attackers can not only create TCP-spoofed connections (which was already known), but can also reliably transmit IP-spoofed data over such connections. This has security implications for applications that rely on TCP endpoint IP addresses, such as firewalling or host-based authentication (e.g., SMTP/SPF, of DBs).
We basically discovered two TCP spoofing primitives. First, attackers can bruteforce the server-chosen send window by acknowledging data that was never sent (what we call "ghost ACKs"; see Figure 3 in the paper). Second, we show that there are side channels that allow the attacker to leak the otherwise-secret server-chosen initial sequence number (ISN). One of these side channels leverages TCP SYN cookies.
We believe that the TCP/IP stack can take countermeasures to prevent such attacks, or at least make them harder. For example, we think that TCP endpoints should ignore ghost ACKs, and have some ideas to randomize the TCP backlog queue to prevent the SYN cookie side channel.
At the same time, we have disclosed our findings to the IETF folks and hope that they have helpful feedback for us.
Last updated 13 November 2024
An old inffast.c optimization turns out to not be optimal anymore with modern compilers, and furthermore was not compliant with the C standard, for which decrementing a pointer before its allocated memory is undefined.
External References:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/0/09/Zlib-report.pdf https://docs.google.com/document/d/10i1KZS5so8xDqH2rplRa2xet0tyTvvJlLbQQmZIUIKE/edit#heading=h.t13tvnx4loq7
Upstream patch:
https://github.com/madler/zlib/commit/9aaec95e82117c1cb0f9624264c3618fc380cecb
CVE assignment:
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q4/602
Last updated 11 July 2025
Apache HTTP Server contains an improper escaping of output vulnerability in modrewrite that allows an attacker to map URLs to filesystem locations that are permitted to be served by the server but are not intentionally/directly reachable by any URL, resulting in code execution or source code disclosure.
A vulnerability exists in an undisclosed iControl REST and BIG-IP TMOS Shell (tmsh) command that may allow an authenticated attacker with at least resource administrator role to execute arbitrary system commands with higher privileges. A successful exploit can allow the attacker to cross a security boundary. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.
A vulnerability exists in the iHealth command that may allow an authenticated attacker with at least a resource administrator role to bypass tmsh restrictions and gain access to a bash shell. For BIG-IP systems running in Appliance mode, a successful exploit can allow the attacker to cross a security boundary. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.
A command injection vulnerability exists in iControl REST and the BIG-IP TMOS Shell (tmsh), which may allow an authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary system commands.
inftrees.c in zlib 1.2.8 might allow context-dependent attackers to have unspecified impact by leveraging improper pointer arithmetic
A use-after-free vulnerability was found in libarchive in RAR decoder. A crafted archive could cause the application to crash.
Upstream issue:
https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/pull/1105
Upstream patch:
https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/commit/bfcfe6f04ed20db2504db8a254d1f40a1d84eb28
A double free vulnerability was found in libarchive in RAR decoder. A crafted archive could cause the application to crash.
Upstream issue:
https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/pull/1105
Upstream patch:
https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/pull/1105/commits/021efa522ad729ff0f5806c4ce53e4a6cc1daa31
When running in Appliance mode, a command injection vulnerability exists in an undisclosed iControl REST and BIG-IP TMOS Shell (tmsh) command that may allow an authenticated attacker with administrator role privileges to execute arbitrary system commands. A successful exploit can allow the attacker to cross a security boundary.
When a BIG-IP LTM Client SSL profile is configured on a virtual server with SSL Forward Proxy enabled and Anonymous Diffie-Hellman (ADH) ciphers enabled, undisclosed requests can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate.
Undisclosed traffic can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate. This issue may occur when a Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) 1.2 virtual server is enabled with a Server SSL profile that is configured with a certificate, key, and the SSL Sign Hash set to ANY, and the backend server is enabled with DTLS 1.2 and client authentication. Note: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated.
When an iRule containing the HTTP::respond command is configured on a virtual server, undisclosed requests can cause an increase in memory resource utilization.
When a client SSL profile is configured on a virtual server, undisclosed requests can cause an increase in memory resource utilization.
When DNS cache is configured on a BIG-IP or BIG-IP Next CNF virtual server, undisclosed DNS queries can cause an increase in memory resource utilization.
When a virtual server, network address translation (NAT) object, or secure network address translation (SNAT) object uses the embedded Packet Velocity Acceleration (ePVA) feature, and the Auto Last Hop setting is disabled, undisclosed traffic can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate. The Auto Last Hop setting is enabled globally by default. For more information about the Auto Last Hop setting, refer to K13876: Overview of the Auto Last Hop setting (15.x - 17.x). To determine which BIG-IP platforms have an ePVA chip, refer to K12837: Overview of the ePVA feature.
When using a multi-bladed platform with more than one active blade, undisclosed traffic can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate.
When a TCP profile with Multipath TCP (MPTCP) enabled is configured on a virtual server, undisclosed traffic along with conditions beyond the attacker's control can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate.
When IPsec is configured on the BIG-IP system, undisclosed traffic can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate.
A stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability exists in an undisclosed page of the BIG-IP Configuration utility that allows an attacker to run JavaScript in the context of the currently logged-in user.
An attacker can make the Node.js HTTP/2 server completely unavailable by sending a small amount of HTTP/2 frames packets with a few HTTP/2 frames inside. It is possible to leave some data in nghttp2 memory after reset when headers with HTTP/2 CONTINUATION frame are sent to the server and then a TCP connection is abruptly closed by the client triggering the Http2Session destructor while header frames are still being processed (and stored in memory) causing a race condition.
When the database variable tm.tcpudptxchecksum is configured as non-default value Software-only on a BIG-IP system, undisclosed traffic can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate.
Incorrect IPv4 and IPv6 private ranges
Apache. This is a vulnerability in open source code and Apple Software among the affected projects. The CVE-ID was assigned by a third party. Learn more about the issue and CVE-ID at cve.org.
Apache HTTP Server is vulnerable to server-side request forgery, caused by a flaw in the modrewrite. By sending a specially crafted request, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause unsafe RewriteRules to unexpectedly setup URL's to be handled by modproxy.
The fix for CVE-2023-24998 was incomplete for Apache Tomcat 11.0.0-M2 to 11.0.0-M4, 10.1.5 to 10.1.7, 9.0.71 to 9.0.73 and 8.5.85 to 8.5.87. If non-default HTTP connector settings were used such that the maxParameterCount could be reached using query string parameters and a request was submitted that supplied exactly maxParameterCount parameters in the query string, the limit for uploaded request parts could be bypassed with the potential for a denial of service to occur.
Validating the order of the public keys in the Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement Protocol, when an approved safe prime is used, allows remote attackers (from the client side) to trigger unnecessarily expensive server-side DHE modular-exponentiation calculations. The client may cause asymmetric resource consumption. The basic attack scenario is that the client must claim that it can only communicate with DHE, and the server must be configured to allow DHE and validate the order of the public key.
Last updated 20 August 2025