Vulnerability Development mailing list archives

Re: OT? Are chroots immune to buffer overflows?


From: Andreas Ferber <aferber () techfak uni-bielefeld de>
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 09:31:12 +0200

On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 03:48:16PM +1200, Jason Haar wrote:

Most buffer overflows I've seen attempt to infiltrate the system enough to
run /bin/sh. In chroot'ed environments, /bin/sh doesn't (shouldn't!) exist -
so they fail.

Is it as simple as that? As 99.999% of the system binaries aren't available
in the jail, can a buffer overflow ever work?

The buffer overflow still works as expected (the bug is in the daemon,
not in /bin/sh), though the shellcode used in most precooked exploits
doesn't work. If the buffer is large enough so that the attacker can
place more code than just an exec("/bin/sh") into it, he can still do
all nasty things inside the bounds of the jail (e.g. uploading his own
shell and executing that one ;-)

Andreas
-- 
       Andreas Ferber - dev/consulting GmbH - Bielefeld, FRG
     ---------------------------------------------------------
         +49 521 1365800 - af () devcon net - www.devcon.net


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