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.


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