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[UNIX] Linux Kernel i386 SMP Page Fault Handler Privilege Escalation


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From: SecuriTeam <support@securiteam.com.>
To: [email protected]
Date: 12 Jan 2005 14:59:31 +0200
Subject: [UNIX] Linux Kernel i386 SMP Page Fault Handler Privilege Escalation
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  Linux Kernel i386 SMP Page Fault Handler Privilege Escalation
------------------------------------------------------------------------


SUMMARY

Locally exploitable flaw has been found in the Linux page fault handler 
code that allows users to gain root privileges if running on 
multiprocessor machine.

DETAILS

Vulnerable Systems:
 * Linux version 2.2 up to and including 2.2.27-rc1
 * Linux version 2.4 up to and including 2.4.29-rc1
 * Linux version 2.6 up to and including 2.6.10

The Linux kernel is the core software component of a Linux environment and 
is responsible for handling of machine resources. One of the functions of 
an operating system kernel is handling of virtual memory. On Linux virtual 
memory is provided on demand if an application accesses virtual memory 
areas.

One of the core components of the Linux VM subsystem is the page fault 
handler that is called if applications try to access virtual memory 
currently not physically mapped or not available in their address space.

The page fault handler has the function to properly identify the type of 
the requested virtual memory access and take the appropriate action to 
allow or deny application's VM request. Actions taken may also include a 
stack expansion if the access goes just below application's actual stack 
limit.

An exploitable race condition exists in the page fault handler if two 
concurrent threads sharing the same virtual memory space request stack 
expansion at the same time. It is only exploitable on multiprocessor 
machines (that also includes systems with hyperthreading).

Discussion:
The vulnerable code resides for the i386 architecture in 
arch/i386/mm/fault.c in your kernel source code tree:

[186] down_read(&mm->mmap_sem);

       vma = find_vma(mm, address);
       if (!vma)
              goto bad_area;
       if (vma->vm_start <= address)
              goto good_area;
       if (!(vma->vm_flags & VM_GROWSDOWN))
              goto bad_area;
       if (error_code & 4) {
              /*
               * accessing the stack below %esp is always a bug.
               * The "+ 32" is there due to some instructions (like
               * pusha) doing post-decrement on the stack and that
               * doesn't show up until later..
               */
[*] if (address + 32 < regs->esp)
                     goto bad_area;
       }
       if (expand_stack(vma, address))
              goto bad_area;


where the line number has been given for the kernel 2.4.28 version.

Since the page fault handler is executed with the mmap_sem semaphore held 
for reading only, two concurrent threads may enter the section after the 
line 186.

The checks following line 186 ensure that the VM request is valid and in 
case it goes just below the actual stack limit [*], that the stack is 
expanded accordingly. On Linux the notion of stack includes any 
VM_GROWSDOWN virtual memory area, that is, it need not to be the actual 
process's stack.

The exploitable race condition scenario looks as follows:

A. thread_1 accesses a VM_GROWSDOWN area just below its actual starting 
address, lets call it fault_1,

B. thread_2 accesses the same area at address fault_2 where fault_2 + 
PAGE_SIZE <= fault_1, that is:

[   NOPAGE    ] [fault_1      ] [     VMA     ]  --->  higher  addresses
[fault_2      ] [   NOPAGE    ] [     VMA     ]

where one [] bracket pair stands for a page frame in the application's 
page table.

C. if thread_2 is slightly faster than thread_1 following happens:
[   PAGE2     ] [PAGE1                VMA     ]

that is, the stack is first expanded inside the expand_stack() function to 
cover fault_2, however it is right after 'expanded' to cover only fault_1 
since the necessary checks have already been passed. In other words, the 
process's page table includes now two page references (PTEs) but only one 
is covered by the virtual memory area descriptor (namely only page1). The 
race window is very small but it is exploitable.

Once the reference to page2 is available in the page table, it can be 
freely read or written by both threads. It will also not be released to 
the virtual memory management on process termination. Similar techniques 
like in  <http://www.isec.pl/vulnerabilities/isec-0014-mremap-unmap.txt>; 
http://www.isec.pl/vulnerabilities/isec-0014-mremap-unmap.txt may be 
further used to inject these lost page frames into a setuid application in 
order to gain elevated privileges (due to kmod this is also possible 
without any executable setuid binaries).

Impact:
Unprivileged local users can gain elevated (root) privileges on SMP 
machines.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The information has been provided by  <mailto:ihaquer@isec.pl.> Paul 
Starzetz.
The original article can be found at:  
<http://isec.pl/vulnerabilities/isec-0022-pagefault.txt>; 
http://isec.pl/vulnerabilities/isec-0022-pagefault.txt




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