RE: spying (deleted) file entries in other users' directories

From: Holmes, Ben (Ben.Holmesat_private)
Date: Tue Jul 02 2002 - 04:31:34 PDT

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    What happens if you change bytes 45, 46 and 47 to be the same as 2B, 2C
    and 2D respectively in /public (and make it world read/writable) on
    those affected systems?
    
    Can you then read the file (Assuming they are attribute markers and
    assuming that the file is not overwritten and assuming you can open a
    directory for write..)?
    
    Better still, what if you copied the hex of that directory then just
    rewrote it inside a directory you created (getting around the DIR having
    to be world RW)..
    
    for example (using what you have written, I am on a Win2k box and so I
    can't just cut&paste from a shell prompt, and guest is an unpriv user)
    
    {guest}~$ uname -a
    Some Old Vulnerable System running on a CPU since When_Noah_was_a_boy
    
    {guest}~$ whoami
    guest
    
    {guest}~$ mkdir ~/test
    
    {guest}~$ cd test
    
    {guest}test$ touch TestFile1
    
    {guest}test$ touch TestFile2
    
    {guest}test$ cd ..
    
    {guest}~$ <some hex editor> test
    
    <now you change the contents of "test" to be exactly the same as /public
    and therefore point to the
    inodes/blocks/sectors/whatever-that-filesystem-calls-it that are pointed
    to with /public except changing bytes to "undelete" the file>
    
    {guest}~$ cd test
    
    (hopefully and probably with much dreaming)
    
    {guest}test$ cat confidential-doc
    
    <body of document>
    
    Just a thought..  I'm sure most MODERN filesystems are immune to this
    sort of tampering..
    (I'll have to look into low level directory editing with NTFS, I just
    spent about 2 months manually recovering the $MFT with DiskEdit and
    finding the corruption was on top of the sectors I wanted anyway, I have
    to get something out of it, I doubt Windows NT+ would allow me to open a
    directory, even one I own, for binary write..), but the cross linking
    may cause a filesystem checking app to get it all wrong and give the
    wrong person permissions maybe!?..
    
    -- Benjamin Holmes
    
    E&OE. All spelling and grammatical errors are for your enjoyment and
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    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: FozZy [mailto:fozzyat_private]
    > Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2002 6:57 AM
    > To: vuln-devat_private
    > Subject: spying (deleted) file entries in other users' directories
    > 
    > 
    > Hello,
    > 
    > There is an old known (i hope) security issue if 
    > unpriviledged users are allowed to open() a directory to get 
    > a file descriptor and then read() the contents of this file. 
    > A directory is itself a file storing the names and inodes 
    > numbers (etc.) of the files it contains, including deleted 
    > ones. So if a user reads this file it can get the names of 
    > the deleted files. 
    > 
    > The examples below show that on an old FreeBSD4.4, if you 
    > store files into a private directory readable only by you, 
    > then you remove every sensitive files and give read-only 
    > access to everyone on the directory (no execute perm needed), 
    > the filenames will still show up to any user. Same thing if 
    > you change the directory name, of course. (mv bad; rm then 
    > mkdir rules ;)
    > 
    > This becomes an issue when sensitive information is disclosed 
    > into the filename.
    > 
    > Sorry if it was already done on this mailing-list, but if 
    > not, I think it could be interesting to some people to know 
    > what systems are still vulnerable and what are not.
    > - Linux is immuned: the read() call return the error EISDIR. 
    > OpenBSD seems also to be OK.
    > - FreeBSD 4.4 is vulnerable (didn't looked the CVS, it could 
    > be patched at this time, anybody knows ?)
    > - I saw this for the first time 3 years ago on a SunOS system 
    > while doing "cat /root" as a user. I don't know if current 
    > Sun systems are patched or not.
    > 
    > Don't misunderstand me, this is not an advisory on a new vuln 
    > i discovered, it is a request to the security community for 
    > publishing more info on this topic, cause i am too lazy to 
    > check it myself (although a quick search on google and 
    > securityfocus gave me nothing).
    > 
    > Regards,
    > 
    > FozZy
    > Hackademy / Hackerz Voice
    > 
    > 
    > rooted# uname -v
    > FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE #0: Tue Sep 18 11:57:08 PDT 2001     
    > murrayat_private:/usr/src/sys/compile/GE
    > NERIC 
    > rooted# mkdir /test
    > rooted# touch /test/public-doc
    > rooted# chmod 700 /test
    > rooted# ls -ld /test
    > drwx------  2 root  wheel  512 Jun 22 13:01 /test
    > rooted# touch /test/confidential-doc
    > rooted# <...some work with the doc here...>
    > rooted# rm /test/confidential-doc 
    > rooted# chmod 744 /test
    > rooted# su guest
    > $ hexdump -C /test
    > 00000000  2d 4a 00 00 0c 00 04 01  2e 00 00 00 02 00 00 00  
    > |-J..............|
    > 00000010  0c 00 04 02 2e 2e 00 00  d7 4a 00 00 e8 01 08 0a  
    > |.........J......|
    > 00000020  70 75 62 6c 69 63 2d 64  6f 63 00 c8 d8 4a 00 00  
    > |public-doc...J..|
    > 00000030  d4 01 08 10 63 6f 6e 66  69 64 65 6e 74 69 61 6c  
    > |....confidential|
    > 00000040  2d 64 6f 63 00 ec 70 c8  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  
    > |-doc..p.........|
    > 00000050  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  
    > |................|
    > *
    > 00000200
    > $ /bin/ls /test
    > public-doc
    > $ exit
    > rooted# ls -l /test
    > -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  0 Jun 22 13:01 public-doc
    > rooted# mv /test /public
    > rooted# chmod 755 /public
    > rooted# su guest
    > $  ls -l /public
    > -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  0 Jun 22 13:01 public-doc
    > $ hexdump -C /public
    > 00000000  2d 4a 00 00 0c 00 04 01  2e 00 00 00 02 00 00 00  
    > |-J..............|
    > 00000010  0c 00 04 02 2e 2e 00 00  d7 4a 00 00 e8 01 08 0a  
    > |.........J......|
    > 00000020  70 75 62 6c 69 63 2d 64  6f 63 00 c8 d8 4a 00 00  
    > |public-doc...J..|
    > 00000030  d4 01 08 10 63 6f 6e 66  69 64 65 6e 74 69 61 6c  
    > |....confidential|
    > 00000040  2d 64 6f 63 00 ec 70 c8  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  
    > |-doc..p.........|
    > 00000050  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  
    > |................|
    > *
    > 00000200
    > $ exit
    > 
    > 
    > 
    
    
    



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