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Race Conditions and Dirty Race Condition Mooo Meltdown, DirtyCOW and more! What is a Race Condition? Race conditions are the result of code that need to happen in a certain order but have unintended consequences when they are misordered. Exploiting a race condition vulnerability: - Make instructions execute in a unintended order - Take advantage of undefined behavior History of Race Condition The term race condition has been used since 1954 in Huffman’s notes on his thesis of sequential switching circuits Did not describe the vulnerability in software, but was used to describe an event that would occur in hardware For example, suppose there is an AND gate that takes 2 inputs: A and NOT A If A were to change from false to true, the term race condition was used to describe a glitch in which there was a time lag for NOT A to change to false For a short moment, both A and NOT A will be true → results in (A AND NOT A) = True Why are Race Conditions prevalent? ● Large code bases ○ “The Linux kernel has around 27.8 million lines of code in its Git repository...” ● Writing good, error free multithreaded code is HARD ● Testing for race conditions is HARD ● New features might have unintended effects Unlimited Starbucks Credits Vulnerability discovered by Egor Homakov in 2015 When multiple requests are made to transfer points from card A to card B in a short time frame, a race condition occurs 3 non-atomic processes - check that card A has enough credits - transfer credits to card B - deduct credits from card A Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Correct Sequence: Thread 1 checks the balance of Card A Card A = $5 Card B = $0 Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Correct Sequence: Thread 1 adds $5 to Card B Card A = $5 Card B = $5 Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Correct Sequence: Thread 1 deducts $5 from Card A Card A = $0 Card B = $5 Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Correct Sequence: Thread 2 checks the balance of Card A Card A = $0 Card B = $5 Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Race Condition Sequence: Thread 1 checks the balance of Card A Card A = $5 Card B = $0 Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Race Condition Sequence: Thread 2 checks the balance of Card A Card A = $5 Card B = $0 Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Race Condition Sequence: Thread 1 & 2 each add $5 to Card B Card A = $5 Card B = $10 Thread Sequence Let’s say Card A has a balance of $5 and we want to transfer $5 to Card B two times Race Condition Sequence: Thread 1 & 2 each deduct $5 from Card A Card A = -$5 Card B = $10 Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) Attacker takes advantage of the use of parallel threads for caching 2 non-atomic processes: - moving the data the cache - checking for user authorization to access the data Attacker sets base_address and tries read(base_address + (read(x)=y)) where ‘y’ is data that is accessible only by root Reads from addresses until they get a fast receive Attacker now knows the value of ‘y’ See: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-5754 History of Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) Meltdown officially discovered and assigned a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures ID in January 2018 Discovered by Jann Horn (Google Project Zero), Werner Hass & Thomas Prescher (Cyberus Technology) Daniel Gruss et al. (Graz University of Technology) Initially thought to be a false vulnerability by security analysts because of catastrophic it is Attempts to patch the vulnerability resulted in reduced performance (around 5-30% performance speed decrease) DirtyCOW (CVE-2016-5195) Exploits the kernel functions that handle Copy-on-Write (COW) Process requests a copy of some data → Kernel does not create an actual copy until it is written to 2 non-atomic processes: - locating the physical address to write to - writing to the physical address In between the 2 processes, the attacker tricks the kernel into writing to the original file instead of the copy See: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=cve-2016-5195 DirtyCOW (cont’d) Attacker logs in as a normal user and uses mmap to request a private mapping of a root file that they do not have write privileges to Instead of writing to the address returned by mmap, the attacker writes to the file /proc/self/mem which allows process-to-process virtual memory access Attacker writes to the private mapping → kernel now looks for a physical address to write to Before kernel can write to the address, attacker calls Madvise to tell the kernel to toss the private mapping Kernel writes to the root file instead History of DirtyCOW (CVE-2016-5195) First discovered by Phil Oester in September 2007 Reported the exploit when he found that it was used in an attack against one of his servers DirtyCOW is thought to have been existed even before because Phil discovered it as a victim and not as an attacker The first patch for it was released 9 years later and it wasn’t until November 2017 that the vulnerability was fully patched ZNUI Malware In 2017, over 1200 Android Apps were found to be infected with ZNUI Disguises itself as pornography apps and utilizes DirtyCOW to gain root access to the device, allowing the malware to plant a back door - once app launches, malware communicates with its C&C servers to search for updates - executes DirtyCOW → attacker now has access to the user’s information - purpose of ZNUI is to pose as the user’s network carrier to make micro-transactions then delete any logs that may alert the user - luckily, carrier transactions are not available internationality so this money scam only works within China but attacker can still steal information from foreign users Drupalgeddon2 In 2018, DirtyCOW was used together with Drupalgeddon2 to exploit websites running on an older version of Drupal Attackers perform massive scan for sites running on outdated versions of Drupal Using Drupalgeddon2, attackers were able to access local configuration files and search for root accounts that they could then to attempt and log into In the case where they cannot log in, they use DirtyCOW to elevate to root privileges and install SSH daemons Why Exploit it? Exploiting race condition vulnerabilities often lead to gaining root access or executing commands with root privileges Often used in combination with other exploits and malware As we’ve seen in the previous examples, attackers often use these exploits to gain profit. Common Uses: Financial transactions Rooting Android Jailbreaking IOS How to Defend Against it: DEVELOPER As a developer: - make sure that code that needs to happen in a certain order happens in that order - mutexes - semaphores - completion flags How to Defend Against it: USER As a user: - be smart about where you download applications - keep software up-to-date with the latest security patches Run the command uname -a 4.8.0-26.28 → Ubuntu 16.10 4.4.0-45.66 → Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 3.13.0-100.147 → Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 3.2.0 -113.155 → Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 3.16.36-1+deb8u2 → Debian 8 3.2.82-1 → Debian 7 4.7.8-1 → Debian unstable Technical Explanation: Dirty Cow ● Linux kernel versions >= 2.6.22 and < {4.8.3, 4.7.9, 4.4.26} ● Any version or distro between September 2017 and November 2017 ○ Ubuntu < 12.04, 14.04, 16.04 ○ Debian < 8 see: https://github.com/dirtycow/dirtycow.github.io/wiki/PoCs Technical Explanation: Dirty Cow ● Targets files that are: ○ read only e.g. configuration files ○ setuid files/binaries e.g. passwd, ping, etc see: https://github.com/dirtycow/dirtycow.github.io/wiki/PoCs TECHNICAL EXPLANATION DirtyCow Step by Step: Start START: READ ONLY file owned by root on our physical disk GOAL: WRITE to the file mmap: maps the file on the physical disk to virtual memory The prot argument describes the desired memory protection of the mapping (and must not conflict with the open mode of the file). -Linux manual mmap MAP_PRIVATE : Create a private copy-on-write mapping. Updates to the mapping are not visible to other processes mapping the same file, and are not carried through to the underlying file. -Linux manual mmap ● Shares the same memory ● Runs in the same process ● Randomly schedule ● Shares the same memory ● Runs in the same process ● Randomly schedule madvise: give advice to the kernel about use of memory MADV_DONTNEED: hints the kernel to not except access to this region in memory DirtyCow Step by Step map=mmap(NULL,st.st_size,PROT_READ,MAP_PRIVATE,f,0); void *mmap(void *addr, size_t length, int prot, int flags, int fd, off_t offset); mmap: maps the file on the physical disk to virtual memory Result: Kernel loads a mapping of the file into memory Aside: Why mmap? ● Reading/Writing to physical memory is slow ● Virtual Memory (ram) is fast ● Load the files into memory so we can access them faster DirtyCow Step by Step map=mmap(NULL,st.st_size,PROT_READ,MAP_PRIVATE,f,0); void *mmap(void *addr, size_t length, int prot, int flags, int fd, off_t offset); > The prot argument describes the desired memory protection of the mapping (and must not conflict with the open mode of the file).
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