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Message-Id: <36C1AFC4-7142-4557-9127-658BABE0AAF5@chromium.org>
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2024 13:24:58 -0800
From: Roxana Bradescu <roxabee@...omium.org>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Kernel vulnerabilities CVE-2021-33630 &
 CVE-2021-33631



> On Jan 30, 2024, at 4:56 PM, Demi Marie Obenour <demi@...isiblethingslab.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 03:01:24PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 10:45:00PM +0100, Solar Designer wrote:
>>> Thank you Greg for looking into these issues.  It's great that most
>>> longterm kernel trees appear already fixed.
>> 
>> I've taken the one remaining missing fix into the next round of kernel
>> releases, so all should be good now.
>> 
>>> For CVE-2021-33631 (the ext4 BUG), both the distro vendor's and NVD's
>>> CVSS input vectors specify AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N, which means the
>>> vulnerability can be triggered by a local system user at will and
>>> without additional privileges.  I'd say that deliberately getting the
>>> kernel to work on a corrupted filesystem requires at least one of:
>>> physical access (AV:P) or privileges on the system (PR:H) or user
>>> interaction (UI:R).  However, there's no way to encode this in one CVSS
>>> vector.  Also, in the physical access case, at least the availability
>>> impact typically does not apply (would be A:N).
>> 
>> The "interesting" thing here is that the project in question (the
>> kernel) does not consider "mounting a corrupted filesystem" as a real
>> attack vector at all.  There's been long discussions about it, the most
>> recent being last year on the kernel summit discuss mailing list, and at
>> the kernel summit itself.
> 
> The kernel itself does not, but there are downstreams of the kernel that
> do for at least a subset of filesystems.  These include Android and
> Chromium OS.

ChromeOS Security here, and this is correct.

> 
>> So while CVSS might consider this a real issue, the developers of the
>> project itself do not.  The disconnect is one that drives people who use
>> sysbot tools to create fancy corrupted filesystem images with the goal
>> of getting a CVE for their CV, crazy on a weekly basis when the issues
>> they report get constantly ignored.
> 
> If someone finds a vulnerability in F2FS or ext4 that can be used to
> compromise the kernel by crafting a malicious filesystem, they should
> report it to the Android or Chromium OS security teams, respectively.
> It’s a verified boot bypass and I expect that it would be in scope for
> the respective bounty programs.  If Android mounts FAT and exFAT in the
> kernel, then vulnerabilities in these filesystems should be reported to
> the Android security team.
> 
> Google requires that F2FS and ext4 are secure against malicious
> filesystem images, so they should be the ones responsible for fixing any
> vulnerabilities that require a malicious filesystem image to trigger.
> Fortunately, they have the resources to do that, so this should not be a
> problem for them.

Vulnerabilities can be reported to ChromeOS and Android via https://bughunters.google.com
If any questions, can reach out to chromeos-security@...omium.org 

> 
> Could this be documented somehow, so that people know to send reports
> against f2fs and ext4 to those who will actually fix them?

We will document something on the ChromeOS side. Thanks for flagging this!

—
Regards, Roxana

> -- 
> Sincerely,
> Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)
> Invisible Things Lab




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