Dirty Pipe: CVE-2022-0847
https://tryhackme.com/room/dirtypipe
Last updated
https://tryhackme.com/room/dirtypipe
Last updated
In March 2022, a researcher named Max Kellerman publicly disclosed a Linux Kernel vulnerability (nicknamed "Dirty Pipe" for its similarities to the notorious "Dirty Cow" exploit affecting older versions of the kernel) that allowed attackers to arbitrarily overwrite files on the operating system. The vulnerability was responsibly disclosed in early 2022 and was publicly released in a blog post written by Max Kellerman soon after patches were made available.
Arbitrary file overwrites at the kernel level can be very easily leveraged to escalate privileges on the machine (i.e. to obtain administrator, or "root" privileges). This is a devastating vulnerability, made more so by its reach: any devices running a vulnerable version of the Linux kernel (including Android phones) are affected!
Due to their low-level nature, any in-depth discussion of kernel vulnerabilities quickly becomes rather complicated. As such we will keep the information in this task relatively light, in the interests of keeping the information easy to digest. If you would like to read an in-depth explanation of the vulnerability (including a full code analysis), you are highly encouraged to check out Max Kellerman's original blog post.
The first thing we want to do is create a hash so that we can add a user to the /etc/passwd file
We now want to make a template for what we want to add to /etc/passwd
We have our file (/etc/passwd) and our content (the passwd entry) — all we need now is the offset. The offset is where in the file the exploit should begin writing at — in other words, which part of the file gets overwritten.
The vulnerability won't allow us to append to the file, so we are going to have to pick an account and overwrite it. Realistically speaking, given the length of our passwd entry (hash inclusive), this will probably actually overwrite several accounts. Looking through the passwd file, the games account stands out as being a good candidate for a little-used account which we can afford to nuke for a few minutes. We can use grep with the -b switch to find the offset of games from the start of the file:
Then the command should look like this:
Note: It is importtant to have that ' on the next line
Note: This flag is partially hidden
In the previous task, we exploited the Dirty Pipe vulnerability using Max Kellerman's original proof of concept exploit code; however, other exploits have since been released. The original PoC allowed us to overwrite any file with arbitrary data at an offset of our choosing; however, other implementations have abused the arbitrary file write vulnerability in a variety of different ways.
To demonstrate this concept, a second exploit script has been added to the lab machine — this can be found on the target at /home/tryhackme/Exploit/Bl4sty/dirtypipez.c. As the directory structure suggests, this implementation was coded by @bl4sty, a security researcher who you may remember if you have already completed the "SudoVulns: Baron Samedit" room. The original exploit code can be downloaded from bl4sty's website here; however, as mentioned previously, a copy has already been added to the lab machine.
This exploit takes the arbitrary file write one stage further by abusing a rather special quality of the vulnerability. SUID Programs usually lose their SUID bit when you attempt to write to them; however, this does not happen with Dirty Pipe — in other words, we can write to any program that has permission to execute with higher privileges, without inadvertently destroying that extra permission (as would usually happen).
Bl4sty's exploit capitalises on this. Instead of overwriting a file like /etc/passwd, it overwrites a user-specified SUID binary (such as /bin/su), injecting shellcode into it which then gets executed with the permissions of the privileged user (i.e. root). Specifically, the exploit hijacks the chosen SUID binary and forces it to create a backdoor binary in /tmp which has the SUID bit and calls /bin/sh. It then restores the targeted SUID binary to full working order by re-adding the overwritten section, and uses the newly created backdoor to grant the attacker a shell as the privileged user.
When looking for a Linux privilege escalation keep an eye out for the kernel version because if it is 5.8, this could be an easy attack vector
Even if the linux operating system is read-only (like bottlerocket) the kernel could still be vulnerable to this attack
