The Linux Kernel fix for SACK vulnerabilities broke Steam
Steam users who upgraded to the latest kernels have found themselves unable to connect to the Steam network. It's already fixed in git master and a patch will be included in the next round of stable kernel releases. A temporary workaround for Steam users is to add the -tcp command-line option to Steam which will by-pass it's default WebSocket connection method and use TCP directly.
Steam bug #6326 appears to affect a large amount of people using a variety of distributions. Interestingly, not everyone who upgraded to the newer kernels fixing the SACK networking vulnerabilities have problems - but a large amount do. The issue can be worked around by launching Steam with:
steam -tcp
That -tcp option could also be added to the Exec line in /usr/share/applications/steam.desktop
Linus Torvalds has already pulled a fix from Google asset Eric Dumazet into git master as commit b6653b3629e5b88202be3c9abc44713973f5c4b4. Linus has instructed the stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman to include this patch in the next round of releases of the stable kernel branches.
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Note: By next round of kernel releases we mean 5.1.14, 4.19.55 and 4.14.130. The patch for the Steam issue is not included in 5.1.13, 4.19.54 and 4.14.129 which were released today. |
published 2019-06-22 - last edited 2019-06-23
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