Re: The disappearing sys_call_table export.

Werner Almesberger
2003-05-10T18:30:45Z

Ahmed Masud wrote:
> yield(random(threshold)); /* yeild is a sleep */
[...]
> That becomes a bit more difficult to time, because the attacker doesn't
> know when the system call will actually perform its own copy_from_user vs.

So the probability of getting through in one try is about (tR+tH)/tH,
where tR is the average random delay, and tH is the time between the
check and the actual access.

If you keep on trying until you get through, you'll succeed on average
after tR^2/tH+tR.

If you make tR = 1 s (that's pretty long, e.g. if you do this to
unlink(2), a rm -rf of the kernel source tree would take about four
hours) and assume that tH is only one microsecond, the race condition
can still be exploited within typically less than one fortnight.

Since the system would be idle most of the time, such a brute-force
attack could easily go unnoticed, even if somebody cares to monitor
the system often enough.

Sounds like voodoo security to me.

- Werner

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