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Re: Linux kernel: stack buffer overflow with controlled payload in get_options() function


From: Florian Weimer <fweimer () redhat com>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 15:05:34 +0200

On 05/30/2017 03:02 PM, Daniel Micay wrote:
On Tue, 2017-05-30 at 14:52 +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
On 05/30/2017 01:51 PM, Daniel Micay wrote:
It's unreasonable to consider the kernel line untrusted. A CVE being
issued for one of these issues didn't make sense.

It's a potential Secure Boot bypass, so it matters in some theoretical
sense to some downstreams which carry those Secure Boot patches.

(Although I have yet to see anyone to revoke a signature on a kernel
with known root-to-ring-0 escalations, so the practical impact isn't
large because an attack could still downgrade to a kernel with an
exploitable vulnerability.)

Florian

How is it a secure boot bypass? If the secure boot implementation
doesn't cover the kernel line it's already broken.

That's not how the Secure Boot patches work.  They restrict some
features so that they cannot be selected from the kernel command line
(or later from userland), and they do not rely on a bootloader which
does not provide any means for editing the kernel command line.

The provided example was treated as a verified boot vulnerability by
Google and fixed. It isn't supposed to be possible to set the kernel
line with a locked bootloader on Nexus/Pixel devices. It was a bug.

I don't know how Google's user lockout works, so I can't comment on that.

Thanks,
Florian


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