oss-sec mailing list archives
CVE request - kernel: execve: must clear current->clear_child_tid
From: Eugene Teo <eugene () redhat com>
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:09:09 +0800
clone() syscall has special support for TID of created threads. This support includes two features. One (CLONE_CHILD_SETTID) is to set an integer into user memory with the TID value. One (CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID) is to clear this same integer once the created thread dies. The integer location is a user provided pointer, provided at clone() time. kernel keeps this pointer value into current->clear_child_tid. At execve() time, we should make sure kernel doesnt keep this user provided pointer, as full user memory is replaced by a new one. As glibc fork() actually uses clone() syscall with CLONE_CHILD_SETTID and CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID set, chances are high that we might corrupt user memory in forked processes. Following sequence could happen: 1) bash (or any program) starts a new process, by a fork() call that glibc maps to a clone( ... CLONE_CHILD_SETTID | CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID...) syscall 2) When new process starts, its current->clear_child_tid is set to a location that has a meaning only in bash (or initial program) context (&THREAD_SELF->tid) 3) This new process does the execve() syscall to start a new program. current->clear_child_tid is left unchanged (a non NULL value) 4) If this new program creates some threads, and initial thread exits, kernel will attempt to clear the integer pointed by current->clear_child_tid from mm_release() : if (tsk->clear_child_tid && !(tsk->flags & PF_SIGNALED) && atomic_read(&mm->mm_users) > 1) { u32 __user * tidptr = tsk->clear_child_tid; tsk->clear_child_tid = NULL; /* * We don't check the error code - if userspace has * not set up a proper pointer then tough luck. */ << here >> put_user(0, tidptr); sys_futex(tidptr, FUTEX_WAKE, 1, NULL, NULL, 0); } 5) OR : if new program is not multi-threaded, but spied by /proc/pid users (ps command for example), mm_users > 1, and the exiting program could corrupt 4 bytes in a persistent memory area (shm or memory mapped file) If current->clear_child_tid points to a writeable portion of memory of the new program, kernel happily and silently corrupts 4 bytes of memory, with unexpected effects. References: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/871942 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=515423 Patch is not in upstream kernel yet. Thanks, Eugene
Current thread:
- CVE request - kernel: execve: must clear current->clear_child_tid Eugene Teo (Aug 04)
- Re: CVE request - kernel: execve: must clear current->clear_child_tid Michael K. Johnson (Aug 05)
- Re: CVE request - kernel: execve: must clear current->clear_child_tid Steven M. Christey (Aug 18)