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0001 2000/01/20 Difference in Linux 2.x ARP Request handling
==== TESO Informational =======================================================
This piece of information is to be kept confidential.
===============================================================================
Description ..........: Difference in Linux 2.x ARP Request handling
Date .................: 2000/01/20 18:00
Author ...............: scut
Publicity level ......: unknown
Affected .............: ARP protocol handling in Linux 2.x kernels
Type of entity .......: Protocol
Type of discovery ....: implementation difference
Severity/Importance ..: interesting
Found by .............: rookie and scut
Information ===================================================================
An ARP resolution request is usually done in two steps, where one ARP Request
message is send and the host that has an interface configured for the
requested IP address answers with an ARP Answer message. Every ARP message
of one protocol conversion type has the same length to ease processing of the
messages.
In an ARP Answer the sender IP and sender MAC address is included along with
the target IP address and the target MAC address. While it makes sense in an
ARP Answer the same values are included in an ARP Request too, for the sense
of simplicity. While most implementations ignore the sender IP/MAC address
pair in an ARP Request the Linux kernel adds this pair to it's internal ARP
table, having the same effect as if it is an ARP Answer packet.
This allows us to ARP spoof using ARP Requests instead of ARP Answers if the
target system runs Linux. This may be done for stealth purposes or to subvert
ARP packet watching programs such as arpwatch.
Note that this is the correct behavior as defined in RFC 826, where every
implementation should update it's cache before even looking at the ARP opcode.
Every other common implementation however (including all BSDs and Windows
systems) do not do this.
===============================================================================
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