CVE-2008-4609

BSD and Cisco IOS - Denial of Service via TCP State Table Manipulation

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Exploitation Summary

EIP tracks 1 public exploit for CVE-2008-4609. PoCs published by mrclki.

AI-analyzed exploit summary This repository contains a functional Go implementation of the Sockstress (CVE-2008-4609) denial-of-service attack. It crafts and sends malformed TCP packets to exploit a vulnerability in TCP stack implementations, causing resource exhaustion on the target system.

Description

The TCP implementation in (1) Linux, (2) platforms based on BSD Unix, (3) Microsoft Windows, (4) Cisco products, and probably other operating systems allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (connection queue exhaustion) via multiple vectors that manipulate information in the TCP state table, as demonstrated by sockstress.

Exploits (1)

nomisec WORKING POC 17 stars
by mrclki · poc
https://github.com/mrclki/sockstress

This repository contains a functional Go implementation of the Sockstress (CVE-2008-4609) denial-of-service attack. It crafts and sends malformed TCP packets to exploit a vulnerability in TCP stack implementations, causing resource exhaustion on the target system.

Classification
Working Poc 95%
Attack Type
Dos
Complexity
Moderate
Reliability
Reliable
Target: TCP stack implementations (various vendors)
No auth needed
Prerequisites: Network access to the target system · Ability to send raw TCP packets
devstral-2 · analyzed Feb 18, 2026 Full analysis →

References (15)

Core 15
Core References
Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory x_refsource_hp
http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=125856010926699&w=2
Third Party Advisory, US Government Resource third-party-advisory x_refsource_cert
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA09-251A.html
Patch, Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory x_refsource_ms
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2009/ms09-048
Broken Link vendor-advisory x_refsource_mandriva
http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2013:150

Scores

EPSS 0.0171
EPSS Percentile 82.6%

Details

CWE
CWE-16
Status published
Products (50)
bsd/bsd
bsd/bsd 4.1
bsd/bsd 4.2
bsd/bsd 4.3
bsd/bsd 4.4
bsdi/bsd_os
bsdi/bsd_os 1.1
bsdi/bsd_os 2.0
bsdi/bsd_os 2.0.1
bsdi/bsd_os 2.1
... and 40 more
Published Oct 20, 2008
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026