Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:19:06 +0000
From: Tavis Ormandy <taviso@...too.org>
To: "J. Oquendo" <sil@...iltrated.net>
Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: SSH brute force blocking tool

On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 11:59:43AM -0500, J. Oquendo wrote:
> Tavis Ormandy wrote:
> >On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 04:02:36PM +0000, Tavis Ormandy wrote:
> >I notice you also havnt solved the local privilege escalation, this can
> >be abused by local users to gain root by attempting to login with the
> >username set to a valid passwd entry and then winning the race condition
> >by creating a symlink to the system passwd file (of course, there are
> >dozens of other attacks).
> >
> >Thanks, Tavis.
> 
> And just what on God's earth does "SOMEONE LOGGING IN WITH USERNAME SET 
> TO A VALID PASSWORD ENTRY" have to do with this script. Let me take my 
> script out of the equation for a minute. "SOMEONE LOGS IN WITH A 
> USERNAME SET TO A VALID PASSWORD ENTRY" don't you think this is a 
> problem with the system they're on? Please explain to me how because I'm 
> seriously curious to know how you envision this happening with this 
> script of mine.
> 

J, take a deep breath. I understand that you are new to security, but
this is a big topic that is too difficult to summarise in one email, but
I will try to explain it in simple terms.

I said "attempting to login with the username set to a valid passwd
entry", not password entry. passwd entries are described in the
passwd(5) manual. This would cause your script to output a passwd entry
and save it to /tmp/hosts.deny due to this line:

awk '/invalid user/{print $13}' /var/log/secure|sort -ru >> /tmp/hosts.deny

Notice there is no filtering, even in your "fixed" version.

Okay, now you're using /tmp to store your temporary files, it may
surprise you to know that this is very difficult to do securely, there is
a class of vulnerabilities known as "insecure temporary file creation" and
the classic attack is the symlink attack.

the symlink attack puts a symlink in this predictable location and waits
for your script to write to it, thus overwriting or creating a file with
the privileges of your script (root).

Ahh, but there is a catch, you check if the file already exists and
unlink it if it does. But as this operation is non atomic, you have
created a race condition. This is difficult to explain, but trust me on
this one. Another problem exists as you have used `test -e` to check for
the existence of the file, test -e will return 1 for broken symlinks,
which means an attacker can further manipulate where you write even
without winning the race condition in certain circumstances.

So lets say I convince your script to save a passwd entry giving me root
access to /tmp/hosts.deny, which I have redirected using some linking
attack to /etc/passwd, you append the line of my choice to the passwd
file. I could have said /etc/ld.so.preload, /root/.bashrc, /etc/profile,
it doesnt matter, any will do.

I now have got root on a system where I was previously just an
unprivileged user.

> Nov 27 16:31:21 local sshd[67010]: Illegal user dd from 213.134.128.227
> awk '($5=="Illegal"||$6=="Illegal")&&$9=="from"{print $10}'
> 
> Would stop the insertion attack and only print out the tench field if 
> fields 5, 6 and 9 match Illegal user from.

No it wouldnt, I can add that text to my username "a b x Illegal from
etc". 

> But before you shoot back let me send your response for you:
> SO let me restate. I could modify it to look at lines 5, 6, and 9 ... 
> Take a look at the tenth column and if anything comes after 
> that...Ignore that entire line... Should I have done so, maybe... Will I 
> do so... Maybe...

No, this is still insufficient, and still vulnerable to a local privilege
escalation.

> As to a fix to someone injecting ranDumb addresses. That same awk 
> statement above will work but if they're doing some netcat voodoo, then 
> feel free to shoot off another email on how my script broke TCP/IP entirely.

J, I'm only trying to help you understand the security flaws you have
exposed people to.

Thanks, Tavis.

-- 
-------------------------------------
taviso@....lonestar.org | finger me for my pgp key.
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