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*Juniper SRX Critical Denial of Service Vulnerability*
*Overview*
According to Google Finance: /Juniper Networks, Inc. designs, develops
and sells products and services that together provide its customers
with network infrastructure that creates responsive and trusted
environments for accelerating the deployment of services and
applications over a single network. The Company serves the networking
requirements of global service providers, enterprises and public
sector organizations, which view the network to their success. The
Company offers a product portfolio, which spans routing, switching,
security, application acceleration, identity policy and control, and
management designed to provide performance, choice and flexibility. The
Company operations are organized into two segments: infrastructure and
service layer technologies (SLT). The Company's infrastructure segment
offers scalable routing and switching products that are used to control
and direct network traffic from the core, through the edge, aggregation
and the customer premise equipment level. /
*I. Description*
A Dual-Homed Swapfile Overflow Error [1] can occur under controlled
conditions causing multiple Denials of Service on Juniper SRX
platforms. In a controlled research environment, we tested against an
SRX 240 and believe all versions of the SRX are vulnerable to the
attack.
Juniper's SRX 240 has an input rating of 100-240V~ 50-60Hz
2.5A which is a standard for the form factor and a typical power
requirement. However, under a Solar Maximum, magnetics can adversly
affect the SRX's behavior. Definition: /Solar
maximum is contrasted with solar minimum. Solar maximum is the period
when the sun's magnetic field lines are the most distorted due to the
magnetic field on the solar equator rotating at a slightly faster pace
than at the solar poles. The solar cycle takes an average of about 11
years to go from one solar maximum to the next with an observed
variation in duration of 9 to 14 years for any given solar cycle. /[2] (Of
note: Toyota is currently investigating whether Solar Minimums are
responsible for the current recall. [3,4])
//
/"Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun's
brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at
extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996. The changes so
far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there
are some other significant side-effects: Earth's upper atmosphere is
heated less by the sun and it is therefore less "puffed up." Satellites
in low Earth orbit experience less atmospheric drag, extending their
operational lifetimes. Unfortunately, space junk also remains longer in
Earth orbit, increasing hazards to spacecraft and satellites."
/
It is important to note an attacker does not need to directly connected
to the SRX in order to exploit this vulnerability. In our lab
environment, we recreated a Solar Minimum causing the SRX to overflow
by simply disconnecting the power source from the SRX device. This
caused the device to become unresponsive. Similarly, by disconnecting
ethernet prior to re-creating a Solar Maximum attack, we were able to
cause a denial of service in which all connected devices lost
connectivity to the Internet.
*II. Impact*
Networks will not be able to pass packets through Juniper SRX devices
as the power surge from a possible Solar Maximum may cause the device
to stop working. Other conditions can also adversely affect the SRX.
e.g., an attacker can also disconnect the power cabling, disconnect
ethernet cables all resulting in the same Denial of Service attack.
Packets containing bits equivalent to 0 and or 1 *_will not be_* processed.
*III. Solution*
Place SRX's in a controlled environment safe from hostile magnetics. Use epoxy on power and ethernet cabling.
This vulnerability is present on all Juniper SRX's and quite possibly all Juniper T series routers
Systems Affected
Vendor Status Date Notified Date Updated
Juniper Networks, Inc. Vulnerable 1-April-2010
*Credit*
Disgraced Research Utility Group
http://www.disgraced.org
*References*
[1] http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofh/bofhserver.pl
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_maximum
[3] http://www.livescience.com/technology/toyota-recall-cosmic-rays-100326.html
[4] http://www.tonic.com/article/toyota-safety-recall-cosmic-radiation-electronics/
[5] http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
J. Oquendo
SGFA, SGFE, C|EH, CNDA, CHFI, OSCP
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to
ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things
differently." - Warren Buffett
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