[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2022 12:33:18 +0100
From: Matthias Gerstner <mgerstner@...e.de>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: fscrypt: Multiple File System Related Security Issues
(CVE-2022-25326, CVE-2022-25327, CVE-2022-25328)
Hello list,
in the context of a request to include Fscrypt [1] into openSUSE Tumbleweed
a routine review of the package was required, as it contains a PAM module.
In the course of the review I discovered a number of file system management
related security issues.
I have been reviewing Fscrypt version 0.3.1. Shortly later 0.3.2 got
released, with minor changes in the PAM module but some more changes in
other areas. All issues and source code locations mentioned in this report
relate to the upstream version tag v0.3.1. Most of the findings are also
valid for 0.3.2, however.
All acknowledged issues mentioned in this report have been addressed in the
new Fscrypt upstream release version v0.3.3.
1) About Fscrypt
================
Fscrypt allows to setup transparent file encryption of specific directories
*embedded* within a file system i.e. it is not block device encryption but
needs the support of the underlying file system to do its thing. The Linux
kernel keyrings and some special `ioctl()` calls are used to set this up.
Fscrypt is mostly written in Golang with some bits of C code for the PAM
module integration.
The configuration is rather simple. Global settings are stored in
/etc/fscrypt.conf. An initial `fscrypt setup` as root performs global
configuration steps. `fscrypt encrypt` creates an encrypted directory on a
suitable file system. File systems need to be mounted or tuned specially to
support this type of encryption, for example for EXT4:
tune2fs -Oencrypt /dev/my_block_device
Data structures called Protectors and Policies are stored on the target file
system's root directory in the hidden location ".fscrypt". The directories
".fscrypt/policies" and ".fscrypt/protectors" are public sticky bit
directories using mode 1777. The Protectors and Policies for the target file
system for all users are stored there.
2) About the PAM module
=======================
The `pam_fscrypt.so` module has the task of automatically unlocking encrypted
directories during login. This works only when the passphrase for the user
account and the passphrase for the Fscrypt encryption key match. A state of
the art digest calculation approach with multiple rounds is used to calculate
a hash from the passphrase for this purpose. There are also recommendations in
the project's documentation on how to improve the security of the user
password digest stored in /etc/shadow to better match Fscrypt's digest
security.
The PAM module implements the "auth", "passwd" and "session" hooks:
- in the "auth" context the module checks whether there are any Protectors
present for the user about to login. Only if this is the case will the
cleartext passphrase be carried over into the other PAM contexts for being
able to unlock directories or change the passphrase during later phases.
- in the "passwd" context the existing Protector will be re-wrapped using the
old and new passphrases provided.
- in the "session" context any configured keys will be unwrapped using the
cached cleartext passphrase. The actual keys will be assigned to the target
file systems using `ioctl()` calls. A session counter is maintained in
"/run/fscrypt" to allow locking of encrypted directories again when all
sessions for a user have been closed.
3) Positive Implementation Aspects
==================================
- The module drops privileges to the about-to-login user most of the time,
which is good. It is sometimes a bit hard to follow, because privileges
are switched back and forth multiple times for elevated operations. The
Golang `defer` feature makes this pretty robust though.
- For a couple of file system objects sanity checks on their modes are
performed e.g. for "/run/fscrypt" and the metadata in ".fscrypt" in
each file system mount.
- No files are created during PAM module operation so there should be no
problems in this area like writing to user controlled paths.
- When the PAM module is invoked on behalf of the root user logging in
then the code still runs completely with root privileges for
everything, so basically all code needs still to be treated similarly
as if it would be running as root. What will not happen most of the
time is that the module runs as root on behalf of a different user.
- Parsing of "/proc/self/mountinfo" is implemented prudently and correctly as
far as I can see. Tricking it with e.g. `fusermount` is not possible, the
source file system field is not even used anywhere in the program.
- The PAM module takes extra care to wipe cleartext passphrases from memory
again when they are no longer required.
4) Fscrypt Metadata Directory Structure
=======================================
A problematic aspect of Fscrypt are the world-writable metadata directories
like in "/.fscrypt". The directory hierarchy looks like this for each file
system that is setup for Fscrypt:
/.fscrypt/ root:root drwxr-xr-x
/.fscrypt/policies root:root drwxrwxrwt
/.fscrypt/protectors root:root drwxrwxrwt
Inside 'policies' and 'protectors' files owned by different users that use
Fscrypt on the target file system are to be found. For example in protectors:
1db71a9f6fa85de6 attacker:attacker -rw-r--r--
82a7a2ba412af544 root:root -rw-r--r--
d78ce93f73fb3def mgerstner:users -rw-r--r--
These files contain binary protobuf [2] data. For reference there are two
deserialized examples of the involved data structures in sections 4.a) and
4.b).
The problems with this setup are that for most situations any user in the
system can write to these public sticky bit directories. The Fscrypt logic
does not differentiate between different ownership of files found there i.e.
all files will be parsed and as all files are world-readable this means all
data found in there will be considered for processing. Fscrypt does not avoid
following symlinks at any stage i.e. all parts of the directory structure
could be symlinks to other file system locations. Also the ownership of the
directories is never checked, only the permission bits. This leads to a number
of security concerns that are outlined in section 5).
4.a) Protector Data Structure
-----------------------------
This is a typical example of a deserialized Protector metadata structure:
protector_descriptor: "0996c7bcdbde966f"
source: pam_passphrase
costs {
time: 19
memory: 131072
parallelism: 3
}
salt: "\344j\220\002\230\256\205\240\273\264\301\207T\3626I"
uid: 1001
wrapped_key {
IV: "=\356\324\240\343\001\265\004\205Cv\272\222$A3"
encrypted_key: "\354\260\021N\330\233\322\260\307\242\303R\210\321ir\r\275\372\336\360\031\344\365\311~\362m\370\315=\371"
hmac: "\207u\356=\357n\3626:Ee_\303\000\233\"\344V\247LR\275\364\311\276\252|\026v\272\305\363"
}
4.b) Policy Data Structure
--------------------------
This is a typical example of a deserialized Policy metadata structure:
key_descriptor: "00837eb05ba8443633528756aa28f288"
options {
padding: 32
contents: AES_256_XTS
filenames: AES_256_CTS
policy_version: 2
}
wrapped_policy_keys {
protector_descriptor: "d78ce93f73fb3def"
wrapped_key {
IV: "\007\031\377\034HW\204\254\276\373\217\323\271,2^"
encrypted_key: "\216a\3061\374\0058\333\2663sZ\206\016\017\330-\312\030\202u\026D\213\027\340\231\036\317\314\'Y\317\276\222\350\r\266\376\234\313Jq\240\343\275\377\n\357|\324^\360\245\226\300\267\000\000\2125S\341\001"
hmac: "=\217\025_\200\031\001:$\3736\275\307(\257\021\356\021\371M\324$d\315\210]_\340H^O\235"
}
}
5) Security Issues
==================
5.a) Possible File System Space Exhaustion by Local Users (CVE-2022-25326)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The world-writable directories below "/.fscrypt" allow to exhaust most of the
space on these file systems, notably also on the root file system. Since these
directories are technically the same as "/tmp", the same problems as in "/tmp"
apply. If "/tmp" is a separate file system or even a memory based tmpfs then
the "/.fscrypt" directories reintroduce the problem again, that any user can
exhaust space on the root or other file systems.
Since "/tmp" is a well known place for world writable access there is a lot of
management around that like deletion of old files or deletion on boot. This is
not the case for the per file system "/.fscrypt" directories. Files there will
survive a reboot and will never be automatically cleaned up, if not configured
explicitly by a system administrator.
Upstream acknowledges this but considers it mostly the job of the system
administrator to establish e.g. file system quotas to prevent issues.
Nevertheless upstream changed the Fscrypt setup workflow [3] to explicitly let
users choose between two different modes for the ".fscrypt" directory tree: a
root-only mode in which the directories are no longer world-writable, which
means that only the root user can setup new encryptions, or the shared mode
that comes with the described space exhaustion attack surface.
5.b) Large Files in .fscrypt Can Prevent Future Logins
------------------------------------------------------
The situation outlined in 5.a) allows any local user with sufficient file
system access to place very large files in these directories. This will not
only waste file system space but `pam_fscrypt` will also attempt to read in
these files. This can quickly lead to an out of memory situation during login,
here the backtrace of an attempt at this:
runtime/panic.go:1198 +0x71
runtime.sysMap(0xc000400000, 0x7f7d0427e180, 0x7ffce0db8aa8)
runtime/mem_linux.go:169 +0x96
runtime.(*mheap).grow(0x7f7d045ddcc0, 0xad328)
runtime/mheap.go:1393 +0x225
runtime.(*mheap).allocSpan(0x7f7d045ddcc0, 0xad328, 0x0, 0x1)
runtime/mheap.go:1179 +0x165
runtime.(*mheap).alloc.func1()
runtime/mheap.go:913 +0x69
[...]
main.pam_sm_authenticate(...)
github.com/google/fscrypt/pam_fscrypt/pam_fscrypt.go:349
_cgoexp_84e5425fcaf2_pam_sm_authenticate(0x7ffce0db8c50)
_cgo_gotypes.go:66 +0x2f fp=0xc0001cfe30 sp=0xc0001cfe00
pc=0x7f7d043f838f
[...]
This means that the login process dies, login becomes impossible and potential
cleanup logic that would be run by Fscrypt code will not be run.
On openSUSE Tumbleweed when the PAM module is added to the "common-auth",
"common-passwd", and "common-session" PAM files this even leads to a
completely broken system upon reboot, because systemd cannot start up
certain components any more, seeing error messages like:
failed to start UserManager for UID ...
I have been able to observe similar effects on a current Arch Linux
installation.
Upstream acknowledges this issue and implemented a maximum file size
restriction when reading in files from the public sticky bit directories to
prevent this [4].
5.c) Fscrypt Follows Symlinks or Special Files allowing Further DoS Vectors
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Without the kernel's symlink protection the PAM module follows symlinks and
thus also e.g. a link to /dev/zero, causing an infinite loop and memory
exhaustion or blocking the login.
Placing a FIFO special file in one of the sticky bit directories is a simple
way to let the login process block forever or to feed a lot of data into the
login process without having to place symlinks into the directory.
Upstream acknowledges this issue and implemented more careful logic when
opening files to check the file type and ownership of files before processing
them further [4], [5].
5.d) Fscrypt Looks for ".fscrypt" on every Available File System Mount
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Fscrypt logic attempts to access an ".fscrypt" directory on every
available mount in the system including things like /proc/, /sys/, /tmp/, etc.
For one thing this seems unclean and inefficient, because many of these file
systems are not even suitable for Fscrypt encryption.
Furthermore this means that any local user that has write permissions for the
root of a mount point can add additional directories that will be processed by
Fscrypt. For non-final path components even with kernel symlink protection
symlinks would also be followed. This means the `protectors` and `policies`
directories or the `.fscrypt` directory itself could be symlinks to arbitrary
file system locations and Fscrypt would follow them.
The impact is not that severe at first sight, because the original directories
are world-writable anyway. Still it offers a worrying degree of freedom to
make Fscrypt operate in arbitrary file system locations.
Upstream acknowledges this issue but requires following symlinks for certain
features to function. Avoiding processing pseudo file systems like /proc is
already implement in Fscrypt version 0.3.2.
Further improvements have been implemented by upstream in response to this
like sanity checking the basic file system structure of `.fscrypt` and its
sub-directories [6]. Also in the context of the PAM module only files owned by
the currently logging-in user are processed [5].
5.e) `pam_fscrypt` is Executed also for System Accounts
-------------------------------------------------------
`pam_fscrypt` is executed for all kinds of accounts, including the `gdm`
system user, for example, creating a session count for it in "/run/fscrypt".
I would prefer system accounts being excluded, since this unnecessarily
increases the possible attack surface and also wastes resources.
While this is not a concrete security issue upstream agreed to filter out
system accounts smaller than user id 1000 by default now [7].
5.f) The Session Count Logic is not Working Properly
----------------------------------------------------
On my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed setup the session counting is not working as
expected. Directly after system boot the root user already has a session count
of "1", although it never logged in yet. This means that if later on a
directory is unlocked by root logging in interactively, it will never be locked
again.
It probably mostly affects the root user account, similarly other system
accounts as pointed out in 5.e), but system accounts are typically not used
interactively, so the problem won't show up.
Upstream informed me that this is likely an issue in systemd [8]. Furthermore
even if encrypted directories are locked again there is no total security
against local attackers, because file system caches and other memory regions
can still contain cleartext data of the once unlocked directory.
5.g) The Outcome and Success of `pam_fscrypt` can be Influenced by Other Users
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another user can create an arbitrary Protector file in the Fscrypt metadata,
writing another user's UID into it. By doing so the behaviour of
`pam_fscrypt` can be changed:
- normally, if a user doesn't have any protectors present, then the cleartext
password ("AUTHTOK") will not be stored in the PAM handle for later use (see
`pam_fscrypt.go:80`). If another user places a fake Protector into
"/.fscrypt/protectors" then it *will* be stored. This has no direct impact but
it changes a security property of the workflow of the PAM module.
- a malicious user can prevent unlocking to happen for another user that has a
valid Protector/Policy setup, because the logic in `loginProtector()` in
`run_fscrypt.go:148` will use the first protector encountered that has
source "PAM passphrase" and is tied to the respective user's UID. Other
users can create such a protector though (one that won't work for unlocking)
and the `openSession()` function won't look for further protectors for unlocking.
The success of this attack depends upon the internal ordering of directory
entries in ".fscrypt/protectors" (as seen by `ls -U`). By creating a lot of
new files and trial and error (on an Ext4 file system at least) it can be
achieved that an attacker's entry will be processed first.
This has been addressed by upstream in that the PAM module only processes
files owned by the about to be logged in user any more [5]. Spoofed UIDs are
explicitly addressed, too [9].
5.h) OOM Situation during Login by Providing Malicious HashingCosts Parameters
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Similarly to 5.g) a malicious local user can "inject" both a fake Protector
and fake Policy that `pam_fscrypt` will attempt to use for a victim user
logging in. By providing a crafted "HashingCosts" (see 4.a))configuration with
excess values in the Protector metadata the login process will enter an OOM
situation like reproduced here:
fatal error: runtime: out of memory
runtime stack:
runtime.throw({0x7fb0092689f8, 0x320000000})
runtime/panic.go:1198 +0x71
runtime.sysMap(0xc000400000, 0x7fb0090e8180, 0x7ffc321a3f78)
runtime/mem_linux.go:169 +0x96
[...]
goroutine 17 [running, locked to thread]:
runtime.systemstack_switch()
runtime/asm_amd64.s:350 fp=0xc000187680 sp=0xc000187678 pc=0x7fb00911f140
runtime.(*mheap).alloc(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
runtime/mheap.go:907 +0x73 fp=0xc0001876d0 sp=0xc000187680 pc=0x7fb0090e44b3
It is a DoS attack vector similar to the one discussed in 5.b). This is fixed
the same way as item 5.g)
5.i) Another User can Cause a Foreign Key to be Applied to its own File System
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's consider a malicious local user that has control over the root directory
of some mounted file system e.g. let's consider its own home directory is a
separate mount. Then this malicious user can do this:
$ ln -s /.fscrypt /home/$USER/.fscrypt
Actually a copy of all the files should also suffice. That Fscrypt is
following symlinks is an extra degree of freedom that is exploited here. The
`filesystem/CheckSetup()` function does only check the mode bits of the
involved directories, but not the actual *owners*, therefore a plain copy of
the directories and files would also be working.
Now when another user unlocks its Protector via the PAM module, the module
will also look into other file systems and since a matching policy will be
found for /home/$USER, the following (strace) happens (with $USER = attacker):
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/attacker", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 4
ioctl(4, FS_IOC_ADD_ENCRYPTION_KEY, 0x7f2738d29000) = 0
So the encryption key is added to a completely unrelated file system. The
attacking user does not seem to have the ability to take advantage of this,
because the key cannot be retrieved back and the ciphertext of the
originally encrypted data can also not easily be duplicated on the other file
system to have the kernel decrypt it.
Upstream acknowledges this issue but doesn't see an attack vector in it,
because the attacker cannot take any advantage of it.
5.j) Bash Completion Potentially Allows Restricted Code Execution (CVE-2022-25328)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part of the Fscrypt package is also a bash completion helper installed e.g. in
/usr/share/bash-completion/completions/fscrypt
This bash completion logic context sensitively expands protector names and
mountpoints that are using fscrypt (i.e. ones that have an ".fscrypt"
structure in its root).
Let's consider a local user that has the ability to mount a writable file
system onto a directory name under its control. This could be the case by
way of special `sudo` rules or removable media mount helpers, for example. For
simplicity in this example it is done as the root user:
mkdir '$(reboot)'
mount -t tmpfs none '$(reboot)'
cd '$(reboot)'
# simply link in the rootfs's metadata
ln -s /.fscrypt
Now `fscrypt` should list this mount point:
fscrypt status | grep reboot
/root/$(reboot) tmpfs not supported Yes
Now let's consider the root user is attempting to complete a mountpoint like
this:
root# fscrypt purge /<tab>
(<reboot happens>)
This works only for single commands without space separated parameters,
because the bash completion is operating on space separated fields in the
output of `fscrypt status`. So it is not easy to get to a full local root
exploit out of this.
Using crafted protector names seems not to have an effect on the bash
completion, because it only extracts sequences of 16-digit hex IDs.
Upstream acknowledges this issue but only sees it as a limited local root
code execution. The bash completion file has been fixed and hardened to avoid
this [10]. Upstream stated that writing safe bash completion files generally
seems to be a difficult matter as it involves some obscure bash syntax (looking
at the file I tend to agree).
# 6) CVE Assignments
Upstream assigned the following three CVEs:
- CVE-2022-25328: Correctly handle malicious mountpoint paths in the fscrypt
bash completion script. This addresses issue 5.j).
- CVE-2022-25327: Validate the size, type, and owner (for login protectors) of
policy and protector files (denial of service). This addresses issues 5.b),
5.c), 5.g) and 5.h).
- CVE-2022-25326: Make the fscrypt metadata directories non-world-writable by
default (denial of service). This addresses issue 5.a).
# 7) Timeline and Upstream Communication
On 2022-02-11 I reported the issues privately to the security contacts of the
Fscrypt project. Upstream quickly confirmed most of my findings but declined
establishing a formal embargo for fixing them, because they didn't consider
the severity of the issues high enough for that.
Therefore a public GitHub pull request [11] was used for discussing a number of
bugfixes and design changes to address the findings in this report. This got
merged on 2022-02-23 and went into release v0.3.3. Although upstream has been
a bit sceptical at first about some of my hardening suggestions they have now
applied most of what I had in mind for improving the overall security of the
".fscrypt" metadata directories.
# 7) References
[1]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt
[2]: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers
[3]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/commit/6e355131670ad014e45f879475ddf800f0080d41
[4]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/commit/1a47718420317f893831b0223153d56005d5b02b
[5]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/commit/74e870b7bd1585b4b509da47e0e75db66336e576
[6]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/commit/85a747493ff368a72f511619ecd391016ecb933c
[7]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/commit/97700817e737eabf45033cdb4a42fa5c6e74f877
[8]: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/8598
[9]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/commit/b44fbe71e1e93c47050322af51725bac997641e0
[10]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/commit/fa1a1fdbdea65829ce24a6b6f86ce2961e465b02
[11]: https://github.com/google/fscrypt/pull/346
Best Regards
Matthias
--
Matthias Gerstner <matthias.gerstner@...e.de>
Security Engineer
https://www.suse.com/security
GPG Key ID: 0x14C405C971923553
SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH
HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg
Geschäftsführer: Ivo Totev
Download attachment "signature.asc" of type "application/pgp-signature" (834 bytes)
Powered by blists - more mailing lists
Please check out the
Open Source Software Security Wiki, which is counterpart to this
mailing list.
Confused about mailing lists and their use?
Read about mailing lists on Wikipedia
and check out these
guidelines on proper formatting of your messages.
