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Message-ID: <cad6e3380e53431ae91d5a3b520e59a59043ab90@opteya.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:13:50 +0000
From: "Yann Droneaud" <ydroneaud@...eya.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: [Linux] /proc/pid/stat parsing bugs

Hi,

21 décembre 2022 à 18:59 "Demi Marie Obenour" <demi@...isiblethingslab.com> a écrit:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2022 at 06:13:17PM +0100, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Hello,
> >  
> >  This is not a single vulnerability, the list of affected software is
> >  large, but it's not a security issue for all of it.
> >  
> >  It occurred to me that most of the Linux procfs /proc/pid/stat and
> >  /proc/pid/task/tid/stat parsing code out there is buggy. The fine
> >  contains a set of numbers about the task:
> >  https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/proc.5.html
> >  
> >  e.g. $ cat /proc/self/stat
> >  1715376 (cat) R 1544883 1715376 1544883 34819 1715376 4194304 106 0 0
> >  0 0 0 0 0 20 0 1 0 42505561 9207808 237 18446744073709551615
> >  93955355631616 93955355651497 140737444557056 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 36
> >  0 0 0 0 0 93955355667504 93955355669120 93955385581568 140737444559745
> >  140737444559765 140737444559765 140737444564971 0
> >  
> >  Most of the code splits it by space and takes an N-th field.
> >  The problem is that the process name "(cat)" can contain spaces (and
> >  brackets). Potentially some important software (containers/sandboxes)
> >  can be tricked into getting wrong data, and I've seen cases close to
> >  stack overflows (buffer for a fixed number of fields is allocated on
> >  stack).
> >  
> >  Some examples:
> >  OpenJDK:
> >  https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/openjdk/jdk/-/blob/src/jdk.management/unix/native/libmanagement_ext/OperatingSystemImpl.c?L133-139
> >  https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/openjdk/jdk8u/-/blob/jdk/src/solaris/native/sun/management/OperatingSystemImpl.c?L223-229
> >  
> >  Ansible:
> >  https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/ansible/ansible/-/blob/lib/ansible/modules/yum.py?L507-510
> >  
> >  Libuv:
> >  https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/libuv/libuv/-/blob/src/unix/linux.c?L674-701
> >  
> >  bdwgc:
> >  https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/mono/linux-packaging-mono/-/blob/external/bdwgc/os_dep.c?L1138-1155
> >  
> >  But really most of the code that does it:
> >  https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+/%5C%22%5C/proc%5C/.*%5C/stat%5C%22/
> >  
> >  The only way to parse it is to do strrchr(')') first (fortunately it
> >  contains just one unescaped string).
> >  
> >  Thanks
> > 
> 
> Should Linux be patched to somehow escape the spaces, or replace them
> with something else? /proc/pid/status is even harder to parse robustly.

It might be difficult because of Linux's policy to not break userspace ABI.

For example, I've suggested some sort of escaping on /proc/net/unix, and
it was not welcomed.

https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220406102213.2020784-1-ydroneaud@opteya.com/

In a follow up, I've added a PoC for injecting fake entries in /proc/net/unix

https://lore.kernel.org/all/8a87957e-4d33-9351-ae74-243441cb03cd@opteya.com/

I didn't found a way to abuse this issue: no vulnerability, no need for
a change that would break userspace ABI.

Regards.

-- 
Yann Droneaud
OPTEYA

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