Black Hat OSPF Vulnerabilities: Much Ado About Nothing

Imagine a group of researchers planning to speak at a conference regarding a previously undiscovered vulnerability present in most homes that would allow a thief to rob your home of its valuables with complete ease.  You would probably be interested in hearing what they had to say so you could take the necessary precautions to protect your home.

Now imagine when they presented their findings, they went on to state that it was incredibly easy to do, so long as you left your front door open and also provided them with the security code for any alarm systems.  You would probably find this implausible and simply the proliferation of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

That’s precisely what happened last week at the well-respected Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas when researchers from the Israel Institute of Technology and Advanced Defense Systems, Ltd. presented their findings of a serious vulnerability present in OSPF.  So serious in fact, the researchers stated the only way to properly mitigate the threat, short of fixing the protocol, is to switch to another routing protocol such as RIP or IS-IS. Continue reading “Black Hat OSPF Vulnerabilities: Much Ado About Nothing”