[GLLUG] Realtek silent data corruption

Richard Houser rick at divinesymphony.net
Mon Jul 30 17:35:04 EDT 2007


This type of error SHOULD have been detected at the IP layer (that's one 
of its duties).  It sounds a lot like this article is just pointing out 
the problem of a buggy Windows IP stack AND buggy device drivers.

Any application protocol entrusted to transfer data without modification 
should have flagged this problem as well (unless relying on a protocol 
like TCP which would just mean the Windows TCP stack is broken). 
Bittorrent is definitely designed to account for this, as that is a very 
common DOS attack vector; the Bittorrent protocol uses cryptographic 
hashing to verify each chunk, so those transfers should always be safe.


Thanks for pointing this out Michael,

If a family member comes to me with such a problem, I'll suggest looking 
for this driver version on the system.

Michael Rudas wrote:
> Although this covers Windows drivers, I mention it here for several reasons:
> 
> * Many of us are forced to use possibly-affected Windows PCs in the
> workplace or at home.
> * The Realtek-supplied Linux driver (if there IS one) may be affected.
> * The corrupted data may wind up on our Linux machines.
> * It may affect torrent transfers for all of us.
> 
> "Realtek network driver silently corrupts data"
> <http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=639>
> 
> Which also begs the question, "How did this driver get
> WHQL-certified?"  It shows real sloppiness on the part of MS and
> Realtek (I admit, no surprises there).
> 
> -- Mikey
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