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Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2023 11:02:50 -0500
From: Demi Marie Obenour <demi@...isiblethingslab.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Code execution through MIME-type association of
Mono interpreter and security expectations of MIME type associations
On Wed, Jan 04, 2023 at 11:47:12PM +0100, Gabriel Corona wrote:
> On Debian and derivatives, the mono-runtime-common package associates
> the application/x-ms-dos-executable MIME type with the Mono CLR
> interpreter [1]. This makes it very easy for an attacker to trigger
> arbitrary code execution through programs such as Chromium [2], Firefox
> [3] and Thunderbird [4] when the Mono packages are installed.
>
> This has been fixed in package 6.8.0.105+dfsg-3.3 [5] which is available
> in Debian testing, Debian Sid and Ubuntu Lunar (23.04). This has
> currently not been fixed in any stable distribution.
>
> On Firefox and Thunderbird, a user interface is used to let the user
> confirm which program to use to open the file. In this case, we can
> trick the user into thinking he is about to open the file with a
> innocuous program by serving the file with a special MIME type such as
> inode/directory or x-scheme-handler/trash [3,4]. These MIME types are
> typically associated with a file manager. When called this way, several
> file managers will try to open the file based on MIME-type associations
> (where the MIME-type is inferred either from the file name extension or
> from the file content). Thunar, PCManFM, PCManFM-Qt were found to
> exhibit this behavior.
>
> For Thunar, this behavior has been fixed in v4.16.7 and v4.17.2 [7].
>
> We can use a visually confusable file name such as REPORT.ΡDF (notice
> the non-ASCII first letter in the extension) in order to trick the user
> into thinking he is opening a "safe" file type while disabling MIME-type
> detection based on the file name extension.
>
> Moreover, in Firefox and Thunderbird [8], we can corrupt the file
> association database (handlers.json) in order to display a bogus file
> type description associated with the inode/directory or x-scheme-
> handler/trash MIME type. This is done by first serving a "safe" file
> type (such as a PDF) with this MIME type.
>
> This begs several questions about file associations:
>
> * Is it legitimate to register file associations for programs
> which can exbibit arbitrary code execution such as unsandboxed
> program interpreters?
No. Failure to do this is a major cause of security problems in
Microsoft Windows.
> * When a program (such as a file manager) is called with a regular file
> it does not handle, should it spawn a new program for handling the
> file without user confirmation (as it may be exploited for file type
> spoofing)?
No, it should not.
> * Should a client program reject special/bogus MIME types such as
> inode/* and x-scheme-handler/* as they are not expected to be
> used in this context (and it may be exploited for file type spoofing)?
Yes, and there needs to be a database of such types.
> I would consider the following behaviors to be vulnerabilities:
>
> * Association of the Mono interpreter with a MIME type in the
> Debian/Ubuntu packages;
I agree.
> * Thunar delegates to MIME type associations when opened with a regular
> file (CVE-2021-32563);
I agree.
> * PCManFM delegates to MIME type associations when opened with a regular
> file;
I agree.
> * PCManFM-Qt delegates to MIME type associations when opened with a
> regular file;
I agree.
> * Firefox and Thunderbird accept "special" MIME types (inode/* and
> x-scheme-handler/*) from remote servers;
Not sure what you mean by “accept”. Do you mean that download should be
aborted?
> * File type spoofing by corrupting the Firefox and Thunderbird
> handlers.json database.
I agree.
> [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=972146
> [2] https://www.gabriel.urdhr.fr/videos/chromium-filetype-spoofing-poc.ogv
> [3] https://www.gabriel.urdhr.fr/videos/firefox-filetype-spoofing-poc.ogv
> [4] https://www.gabriel.urdhr.fr/videos/thunderbird-filetype-spoofing-poc.ogv
> [5] https://packages.debian.org/buster/mono-runtime-common
> [6] https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=mono-runtime-common&searchon=names&suite=all§ion=all
> [7] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-32563
> [8] https://www.gabriel.urdhr.fr/videos/firefox-filetype-spoofing-poc2.ogv
Qubes OS should probably register a catchall handler for special MIME
types that does nothing.
--
Sincerely,
Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)
Invisible Things Lab
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