Monday, February 6, 2012

Security

The abject DHCP agreement does not cover any apparatus for authentication.5 Because of this, it is accessible to a array of attacks. These attacks abatement into three capital categories:

Crooked DHCP servers accouterment apocryphal advice to clients.6

Crooked audience accepting admission to resources.6

Resource burnout attacks from awful DHCP clients.6

Because the applicant has no way to validate the character of a DHCP server, crooked DHCP servers can be operated on networks, accouterment incorrect advice to DHCP clients. This can serve either as a denial-of-service attack, preventing the applicant from accepting admission to arrangement connectivitycitation needed, or as a man-in-the-middle attack. Because the DHCP server provides the DHCP applicant with server IP addresses, such as the IP abode of one or added DNS servers,6 an antagonist can argue a DHCP applicant to do its DNS lookups through its own DNS server, and can accordingly accommodate its own answers to DNS queries from the client.7 This in about-face allows the antagonist to alter arrangement cartage through itself, acceptance it to eavesdrop on admission amid the applicant and arrangement servers it contacts, or to artlessly alter those arrangement servers with its own.7

Because the DHCP server has no defended apparatus for acceptance the client, audience can accretion crooked admission to IP addresses by presenting credentials, such as applicant identifiers, that accord to added DHCP clients.citation needed This aswell allows DHCP audience to bankrupt the DHCP server's abundance of IP addresses—by presenting new accreditation anniversary time it asks for an address, the applicant can absorb all the accessible IP addresses on a accurate arrangement link, preventing added DHCP audience from accepting service.citation needed

DHCP does accommodate some mechanisms for mitigating these problems. The Broadcast Abettor Advice Option agreement addendum (RFC 3046) allows arrangement operators to attach tags to DHCP letters as these letters admission on the arrangement operator's trusted network. This tag is again acclimated as an approval badge to ascendancy the client's admission to arrangement resources. Because the applicant has no admission to the arrangement upstream of the broadcast agent, the abridgement of affidavit does not anticipate the DHCP server abettor from relying on the approval token.5

Another extension, Affidavit for DHCP Letters (RFC 3118), provides a apparatus for acceptance DHCP messages. Unfortunately RFC 3118 has not apparent boundless acceptance because of the problems of managing keys for ample numbers of DHCP clients.8

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