Ping of Death
A ping of death is a special denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) with the aim of causing the attacked system to crash .
A Ping of Death is an ICMP - packet , which due to an error in the implementation of the Internet Protocols on many operating systems, one at the receiver buffer overflow generated. Network packets that are larger than the permitted MTU ( 1500 bytes in the widespread Ethernet ) are usually divided into smaller fragments and reassembled at the recipient. To enable reassembly, each fragment is given a size and an offset , which specifies the position in the overall package. However, it is possible to combine an offset and a fragment size for the last fragment so that the total packet is larger than the maximum permitted 65,535 bytes. When composing such a package, internal variables on the part of the recipient may be overwritten and the system may crash.
As a rule, the systems that are susceptible to this have been patched or are no longer in use today. In addition to Windows NT and Windows 95 , many Unix derivatives such as AIX , HP-UX , Linux and Solaris were also affected .
After the bug was fixed in 2007 for the Solaris operating system, it was initially considered to have been fixed. However, in August 2013 it became known that Windows Server 2012 still contained a bug that could lead to outages. At the same time it was announced that various Windows versions are susceptible to a variant of the Ping of Death that is based on ICMPv6 . This vulnerability was closed with the patches that were released by Microsoft during the patch day in August 2013.
Individual evidence
- ^ A ping - and Solaris panics , Heise Online from January 31, 2007
- ↑ a b Microsoft's August Patches and the Return of the Ping of Death , Heise Online from August 13, 2013
- ↑ Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-064 of August 13, 2013
- ↑ Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-065 of August 13, 2013