Playing with signals: an overview on Sigreturn Oriented Programming
Published on: 03 01 2015 |
Modified on: 20 06 2024
Author: Medhi Talbi
5minutes
Back to last GreHack edition, Herbert Bos has presented a novel technique to exploit stack-based overflows more reliably on Linux. We review hereafter this new exploitation technique and provide an exploit along with the vulnerable server. Even if this technique is portable to multiple platforms, we will focus on a 64-bit Linux OS in this blog post.
All sample code used in this blogpost is available for download through the following archive.
We've got a signal
When the kernel delivers a signal, it creates a frame on the stack where it stores the current execution context (flags, registers, etc.) and then gives the control to the signal handler. After handling the signal, the kernel calls sigreturn to resume the execution. More precisely, the kernel uses the following structure pushed previously on the stack to recover the process context. A closer look at this structure is given by figure 1.
Now, let's debug the following program (sig.c) to see what really happens when handling a signal on Linux. This program simply registers a signal handler to manage SIGINT signals.
int main() { signal(SIGINT, (void *)handle_signal); printf("catch me if you can\n"); while(1) {} return 0; }
/* struct definition for debugging purpose */ struct sigcontext sigcontext;
First of all, we need to tell gdb to not intercept this signal:
gdb$ handle SIGINT nostop pass Signal Stop Print Pass to program Description SIGINT No Yes Yes Interrupt
Then, we set a breakpoint at the signal handling function, start the program and hit CTRLˆC to reach the signal handler code.
gdb$ b handle_signal Breakpoint 1 at 0x4005a7: file sig.c, line 6. gdb$ r Starting program: /home/mtalbi/sig hit CTRL^C to catch me ^C Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
Breakpoint 1, handle_signal (signum=0x2) at sig.c:6 6 printf("handling signal: %d", signum); gdb$ bt #0 handle_signal (signum=0x2) at sig.c:6 #1 <signal handler called> #2 main () at sig.c:13
We note here that the frame #1 is created in order to resume the process execution at the point where it was interrupted before. This is confirmed by checking the instructions pointed by rip which corresponds to sigreturn syscall:
Figure 1 shows the stack at signal handling function entry point.
Figure 1: Stack at signal handling function entry point
We can check the values of some saved registers and flags. Note that sigcontext structure is the same as uc_mcontext structure. It is located at rbp + 7 * 8 according to figure 1. It holds saved registers and flags value:
Now, we can verify that after handling the signal, registers will recover their values:
gdb$ b 13 Breakpoint 2 at 0x4005da: file sig.c, line 13. gdb$ c Continuing. handling signal: 2
Breakpoint 2, main () at sig.c:13 13 while(1) {} gdb$ i r ... rax 0x17 0x17 rsp 0x7fffffffe110 0x7fffffffe110 eflags 0x202 [ IF ] cs 0x33 0x33 ...
Exploitation
If we manage to overflow a saved instruction pointer with sigreturn address and forge a uc mcontext structure by adjusting registers and flags values, then we can execute any syscall. It may be a litte confusing here. In effect, trying to execute a syscall by returning on another syscall (sigreturn) may be strange at first sight. Well, the main difference here is that the latter does not require any parameters at all. All we need is a gadget that sets rax to 0xf to run any system call through sigreturn syscall. Gadgets are small pieces of instructions ending with a ret instruction. These gadgets are chained together to perform a specific action. This technique is well-known as ROP: Return-Oriented Programming [Sha07].
Surprisingly, it is quite easy to find a syscall ; ret gadget on some Linux distribution where the vsyscall map is still in use. The vsyscall page is mapped at fixed location into all user-space processes. For interested readers, here is good link about vsyscall.
Bosman and Bos list in [BB14] locations of sigreturn and syscall gadgets for different operating systems including FreeBSD and Mac OS X.
Assumed that we found the required gadgets, we need to arrange our payload as shown in figure 3 in order to successfully exploit a classic stack-based overflow. Note that zeroes should be allowed in the payload (e.g. a non strcpy vulnerability); otherwise, we need to find a way to zero some parts of uc_mcontext structure.
The following code (srop.c) is a proof of concept of sigreturn oriented programming that starts a /bin/sh shell:
The programm fills a uc_mcontext structure with execve syscall parameters. Additionally, the cs register is set to 0x33:
Instruction pointer rip points to syscall; ret gadget.
rax register holds execve syscall number.
rdi register holds the first paramater of execve ("/bin/sh" address).
rsi register holds the second parameter of execve ("/bin/sh" arguments).
rdx register holds the last parameter of execve (zeroed at struture initialization).
Then, the program overflows the saved rip pointer with mov %rax, $0xf; ret gadget address (added artificially to the program through gadget function). This gadget is followed by the syscall gadget address. So, when the main function will return, these two gadgets will be executed resulting in sigreturn system call which will set registers values from the previously filled structure. After sigreturn, execve will be called as rip points now to syscall gadget and rax holds the syscall number of execve. In our example, execve will start /bin/sh shell.
Code
In this section we provide a vulnerable server (server.c) and use the SROP technique to exploit it (exploit.c).
Vulnerable server
The following program is a simple server that replies back with a welcoming message after receiving some data from client. The vulnerability is present in the handle_conn function where we can read more data from client (4096 bytes) than the destination array (input) can hold (1024 bytes). The program is therefore vulnerable to a classical stack-based overflow.
We know that our payload will be copied in a fixed location in .bss. (at 0x6012c0). Our strategy is to copy a shellcode there and then call mprotect syscall in order to change page protection starting at 0x601000 (must be a multiple ot the page size).
Figure 2: Payload copied in .bss
In this exploit, we overflow our vulnerable buffer as shown by figure 3. First, we fill our buffer with a nop sled (not necessary) followed by a classical bindshell. This executable payload is prepended with an address pointing to the shellcode in .bss (see figure 2).
int handle_error(char *msg) { perror(msg); exit(-1); }
Our goal is to change protection of memory page containing our shellcode. More precisely, we want to make the following call so that we can execute our shellcode:
Here, is what happens when the vulnerable function returns:
The artificial gadget is executed. It sets rax register to 15.
Our artificial gadget is followed by a syscall gadget that will result in a sigreturn call.
The sigreturn uses our fake uc_mcontext structure to restore registers values. Only non shaded parameters in figure 3 are relevant to the exploit. After this call, rip points to syscall gadget, rax is set to mprotect syscall number, and rdi, rsi and rdx hold the parameters of mprotect function. Additionally, rsp points to our payload in .bss.
mprotect syscall is executed.
ret instruction of syscall gadget is executed. This instruction will set instruction pointer to the address popped from rsp. This address points to our shellcode (see figure 2).
The shellcode is executed.
Figure 3: Stack after overflowing input buffer
Replaying the exploit
The above code has been compiled using gcc (gcc -g -o server.c server) on a Debian Wheezy running on x_86_64 arch. Before reproducing this exploit, you need to adjust first the following addresses:
mtalbi@mtalbi:/home/mtalbi/srop$ gdb server (gdb) disas gadget Dump of assembler code for function gadget: 0x0000000000400acf <+0>: push %rbp 0x0000000000400ad0 <+1>: mov %rsp,%rbp 0x0000000000400ad3 <+4>: mov $0xf,%rax 0x0000000000400ada <+11>: retq 0x0000000000400adb <+12>: pop %rbp 0x0000000000400adc <+13>: retq End of assembler dump.
DATA
(gdb) p &data $1 = (char (*)[8192]) 0x6012c0
References
[BB14] Erik Bosman and Herbert Bos. We got signal. a return to portable exploits. (working title, subject to change.). In Security & Privacy (Oakland), San Jose, CA, USA, May 2014. IEEE.
[Sha07] Hovav Shacham. The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone: Return-into-libc without function calls (on the x86). In Proceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS ’07, pages 552– 561, New York, NY, USA, 2007. ACM.