Hello, I have noticed that the hash function that the kernel uses for established TCP/IP connections is rather simplistic, specifically:
h = (local address ^ local_port) ^ (remote_address ^ remote_port); h ^= h >> 16; h ^= h >> 8; Now, simple is great, but this has a number of issues, not the least of which is that an attacker can very easily cause collisions and force extremely long chain lengths, a situation that becomes worse the more distinct IP addresses and listening ports a box has. Consider, for example, a box that has 20 ports open and 4 consecutive IP addresses. An attacker that has an entire class C available can create 24,576 connections that hash to the same value, resulting in a ridiculously overlong chain. With servers that do virtual hosting and have dozens of IPs, the situation can become much worse very fast. This particular hash seems to be the odd-man out, since most other network related hashes in the kernel seem to be Jenkins-based, and some use tagged hashing to defeat algorithmic complexity attacks. For example, the route hash uses this: static unsigned int rt_hash_rnd; static unsigned int rt_hash_code(u32 daddr, u32 saddr) { return (jhash_2words(daddr, saddr, rt_hash_rnd) & rt_hash_mask); } With this in mind, I propose the following replacement for inet_ehashfn, which defeats algorithmic complexity attacks and achieves excellent distribution: unsigned int inet_ehashfn(const __be32 laddr, const __u16 lport, const __be32 faddr, const __be16 fport) { return jhash_3words((__force __u32)faddr, (__force __u32)laddr, (((__force __u32)fport) << 16) + lport, inet_ehash_rnd); } where inet_ehash_rnd is initialized once in tcp_init to a random 32-bit value. I will be more than happy to provide a patch for this, but I figured I would solicit some input first. Nik B. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html