TCP MD5 signatures on sparc64 (big-endian) completely fail on current kernel releases in interoperability with Cisco/Foundry or other little-endian linux systems. The root cause is a cast in the return statement of tcp_v4_md5_do_lookup, where a tcp4_md5sig_key is casted onto tcp_md5sig_key without proper conversion. On little-endian systems the upper 8 bits are cut of which yields the expected behaviour. However, on big-endian systems (like sparc64) only the most significant 8 bits are preserved. Since TCP_MD5SIG_MAXKEYLEN is 80, this always yields 0. In the calculation of the md5 signature afterwards the key is therefore not appended to the tcp segment which could result in a security problem since only the presence of a md5 signature is checked, and the key itself doesn't matter. --- linux.old/include/net/tcp.h 2007-09-28 21:43:26.000000000 +0200 +++ linux/include/net/tcp.h 2007-09-28 21:45:35.000000000 +0200 @@ -1055,6 +1055,7 @@ static inline void clear_all_retrans_hin struct crypto_hash; /* - key database */ +/* this should be compatible with the head of the following two structs */ struct tcp_md5sig_key { u8 *key; u8 keylen; @@ -1062,13 +1063,13 @@ struct tcp_md5sig_key { struct tcp4_md5sig_key { u8 *key; - u16 keylen; + u8 keylen; __be32 addr; }; struct tcp6_md5sig_key { u8 *key; - u16 keylen; + u8 keylen; #if 0 u32 scope_id; /* XXX */ #endif Signed-off-by: Peter Lieven <pl@xxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Matthias M. Dellweg <2500@xxxxxx> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe sparclinux" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html