Remote Linux Kernel < 2.4.21 DoS in XDR routine.

From: Jared Stanbrough (jaredsat_private)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2003 - 12:55:34 PDT

  • Next message: Vade 79: "man-db[] multiple(4) vulnerabilities."

    Hello all,
    
    I have discovered a signed/unsigned issue in a routine responsible for
    demarshalling XDR data for NFSv3 procedure calls. As far as I can tell,
    this bug has existed since NFSv3 support was integrated. It has been
    silently fixed in 2.4.21.
    
    The bug is in the decode_fh routine of fs/nfsd/nfs3xdr.c under the kernel
    source tree.
    
    Vulnerable code:
    
    static inline u32 *
    decode_fh(u32 *p, struct svc_fh *fhp)
    {
            int size;
            fh_init(fhp, NFS3_FHSIZE);
            size = ntohl(*p++);
            if (size > NFS3_FHSIZE)
                    return NULL;
    
            memcpy(&fhp->fh_handle.fh_base, p, size);
            fhp->fh_handle.fh_size = size;
            return p + XDR_QUADLEN(size);
    }
    
    Where p is a packet of attacker controlled XDR data. If size is made to be
    negative, the sanity check is passed and the malicious value is passed to
    memcpy. Due to the behavior of the kernel's memcpy, this will cause a very
    large copy in kernel space, resulting in an instant kernel panic.
    
    The attached code is a POC of this vulnerability. It requires that the
    vulnerable host has an exported directory available to the attacker. This
    is probably not the only way to manifest this bug, however.
    
    If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
    
    Cheers,
    
    Jared Stanbrough <jaredsat_private>
    
    
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jul 29 2003 - 13:11:38 PDT