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Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:59:00 +0200
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh server compromise
Hi,
This is an update on some developments in the recent 2 weeks.
OpenSSH
=======
For upstream OpenSSH, Damien Miller and others have implemented systemd
notifications without reliance on libsystemd:
Bug 2641 - Add systemd notify code to to track running server
https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2641
"Committed as 08f579231cd38 and will be in OpenSSH-9.8, due around
June/July."
In response to Andres Freund's proposal, Damien also implemented a patch
to reduce OpenSSH's attack surface:
Bug 3675 - CASignatureAlgorithms should be verified before verifying signatures
https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3675
not yet committed?
systemd
=======
Upstream systemd's libsystemd has been modified to dlopen() many of its
dependency libraries on demand:
Reduce dependencies of libsystemd #32028
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/32028
The issue above is fixed by pull requests "gcrypt: dlopenify for
libsystemd #32019", "Dynamically load compression libraries #31550",
"man: document that using sd_journal APIs might cause dlopen to happen
and add self-contained notify protocol example #32030", and other
related fix-ups.
xz backdoor analysis
====================
More findings were made about the backdoor's functionality, notably as
published on April 6 by blasty, who discovered that besides triggering
system() the backdoor also allows interactive sessions:
https://twitter.com/bl4sty/status/1776691497506623562
> the xz sshd backdoor rabbithole goes quite a bit deeper. I was just able
> to trigger some harder to reach functionality of the backdoor. there's
> still more to explore.. 1/n
> Image
> it requires sending a properly crafted command to the RSA_public_decrypt
> hook, which will then install another for the `mm_answer_keyallowed`
> sshd function. subsequently you offer N more fake ssh-rsa pubkeys which
> are crafted in a special way to chunk together .. 2/n
> a "magic buffer" which contains more backdoor commands, this buffer also
> has two additional ed448 signatures. which like the ones for the
> RSA_public_decrypt portion of the backdoor are salted with the SHA256
> digest of the hostkey
> the final signature also takes into account the session_id (0x20 bytes)
> that is derived during the initial key exchange (KEX) for the SSH
> session. my current PoC implementation uses a heavily monkey patched
> paramiko (ssh client) library to achieve this
> currently I'm just triggering command 0x03 in this part of the code,
> which allows for a basic RCE through system() again. (also lets you set
> uid/gid). but there's more code that needs to be understood. it looks
> like a full auth bypass (interactive session) is possible!
> (that conclusion is based on the fact that one of the
> mm_answer_keyallowed backdoor commands also hooks mm_answer_keyverify,
> eventually)
> whoever designed this stuff had to take a deep dive into openSSH(d)
> internals (and so did I for the past couple of days, oof) .. hats off,
> once again :)
> auth bypass confirmed!
>
> > INFO:paramiko.transport:Authentication (password) successful!
>
> mm_keyallowed_backdoor cmd 1 allows to override the response for
> mm_answer_authpassword with a custom one. if you set it to { u32(9),
> u8(13), u32(1), u32(0) } you can login with any pass
blasty also implemented a "simple SSH Agent that implements some of the
XZ sshd backdoor functionality":
https://github.com/blasty/JiaTansSSHAgent
On Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 10:25:02PM +0200, Solar Designer wrote:
> There's further analysis of the binary payload here:
>
> https://gist.github.com/smx-smx/a6112d54777845d389bd7126d6e9f504
>
> I've attached the gist .md file above (as of "Revisions 52") to this
> message, but it's ongoing analysis as seen in the comments.
Updates of smx-smx's gist above have stopped at revision 60, which I'm
attaching here for archival. Not a lot was added since revision 52.
smx-smx also maintains xzre "that is linked against the malicious object
file in order to instrument and call into the malware code, particularly
the x64 disassembler":
https://github.com/smx-smx/xzre
and yes, there's a specialized disassembler inside the backdoor code.
The friends at Binarly have produced a later but very detailed analysis,
which I'm also attaching the main .md file of:
https://github.com/binarly-io/binary-risk-intelligence/tree/master/xz-backdoor
Other related repos with tools include:
xzbot "notes, honeypot, and exploit demo for the xz backdoor (CVE-2024-3094)"
https://github.com/amlweems/xzbot
xz-min "Minimal setup to trigger the xz backdoor"
https://github.com/felipec/xz-min
Timeline
========
In an otherwise inappropriate rejected posting, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
> Russ Cox had a writeup on this https://research.swtch.com/xz-timeline
which is a good presentation of the attack timeline, with references to
sources and analyses by others.
(The beginning of this oss-security thread until April 1st inclusive
went through in its entirety - nothing rejected - but I did reject a few
postings on April 2nd and on.)
OpenJS Foundation "Failed Credible Takeover Attempt"
====================================================
On April 15, the OpenJS and OpenSSF foundations released the following:
https://openjsf.org/blog/openssf-openjs-alert-social-engineering-takeovers
https://openssf.org/blog/2024/04/15/open-source-security-openssf-and-openjs-foundations-issue-alert-for-social-engineering-takeovers-of-open-source-projects/
I'll quote an excerpt:
> The OpenJS Foundation Cross Project Council received a suspicious series
> of emails with similar messages, bearing different names and overlapping
> GitHub-associated emails. These emails implored OpenJS to take action to
> update one of its popular JavaScript projects to "address any critical
> vulnerabilities," yet cited no specifics. The email author(s) wanted
> OpenJS to designate them as a new maintainer of the project despite
> having little prior involvement. This approach bears strong resemblance
> to the manner in which "Jia Tan" positioned themselves in the XZ/liblzma
> backdoor.
>
> None of these individuals have been given privileged access to the
> OpenJS-hosted project. The project has security policies in place,
> including those outlined by the Foundation's security working group.
>
> The OpenJS team also recognized a similar suspicious pattern in two
> other popular JavaScript projects not hosted by its Foundation, and
> immediately flagged the potential security concerns to respective OpenJS
> leaders, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
> within the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Alexander
View attachment "smx-smx-xz-backdoor_analysis.md" of type "text/plain" (14757 bytes)
View attachment "binarly-xz-backdoor-readme.md" of type "text/plain" (83785 bytes)
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