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posted by chromas on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the MS-DoS dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Microsoft released a security advisory about a denial-of-service vulnerability that could render multiple versions of Windows completely unresponsive and has no mitigation factors, the company says.

The vulnerability affects all versions of Windows 7 through 10 (including 8.1 RT), Server 2008, 2012, 2016, and Core Installations that don't have the latest set of security updates released as part of the September 2018 Patch Tuesday updates.

Tagged with the identification number CVE-2018-5391, the bug received the moniker FragmentSmack because it responds to IP fragmentation, a process that adjusts the packet size to fit the maximum transmission unit (MTU) at the receiving end.

IP fragmentation attacks are a known form of denial of service, where the victim computer receives multiple IP packets of a smaller size that are expected to be reassembled into their original form at the destination.

FragmentSmack is a TCP fragmentation type of attack, also known as a Teardrop attack, that prevents reassembling the packets on the recipient end. The vulnerability is as old as Windows 3.1 and 95, where it crashed the OS, but it was seen in the more recent Windows 7, too.

Why write all new bugs when you can just reboot old ones?

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/windows-systems-vulnerable-to-fragmentsmack-90s-like-dos-bug/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:55PM (#737146)

    Now someone is going to try to use it make a buck.

    Not the people who branded it "FragmentSmack". They don't seem to have registered any domains using the FragmentSmack moniker, so they're not going to be able to market it. What are they waiting for?