Re: [PATCH] [RFC] Deter exploit bruteforcing

Kees Cook
2014-12-30T18:40:19Z

On Wed, Dec 24, 2014 at 1:39 PM, Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at> wrote:
> While exploring the offset2lib attack I remembered that
> grsecurity has an interesting feature to make such attacks
> much harder. Exploits can brute stack canaries often very easily
> if the target is a forking server like sshd or Apache httpd.
> The problem is that after fork() the child has by definition
> exactly the same memory as the parent and therefore also the same
> stack canaries.
> The attacker can guess the stack canaries byte by byte.
> After 256 times 7 forks() a good exploit can find the correct
> canary value.
>
> The basic idea behind this patch is to delay fork() if a child died
> due to a fatal error.
> Currently it delays fork() by 30 seconds if the parent tries to fork()
> within 60 seconds after a child died due to a fatal error.
>
> I'm sure you'll hate this patch but I want to find out how much you hate it
> and whether there is a little chance to get it mainline in a modified form.
> Later I'd make it depend on a new Kconfig option and off by default
> and the timing constants changeable via sysctl.
>
> Credit for the concept goes to grsecurity folks, I'll take the flames.
>
> Signed-off-by: Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at>
> ---
> fs/coredump.c | 10 ++++++++++
> include/linux/sched.h | 1 +
> kernel/fork.c | 7 +++++++
> 3 files changed, 18 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/fs/coredump.c b/fs/coredump.c
> index b5c86ff..d7730c8 100644
> --- a/fs/coredump.c
> +++ b/fs/coredump.c
> @@ -512,6 +512,7 @@ void do_coredump(const siginfo_t *siginfo)
> bool need_nonrelative = false;
> bool core_dumped = false;
> static atomic_t core_dump_count = ATOMIC_INIT(0);
> + int sig = siginfo->si_signo;
> struct coredump_params cprm = {
> .siginfo = siginfo,
> .regs = signal_pt_regs(),
> @@ -526,6 +527,15 @@ void do_coredump(const siginfo_t *siginfo)
>
> audit_core_dumps(siginfo->si_signo);
>
> + if (sig == SIGSEGV || sig == SIGBUS || sig == SIGKILL || sig == SIGILL) {

I think we should add SIGSYS to this list.

> + rcu_read_lock();
> + read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
> + if (current->real_parent && (current->flags & PF_FORKNOEXEC))
> + current->real_parent->brute_expires = get_seconds() + (30 * 60);
> + read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
> + rcu_read_unlock();
> + }
> +
> binfmt = mm->binfmt;
> if (!binfmt || !binfmt->core_dump)
> goto fail;
> diff --git a/include/linux/sched.h b/include/linux/sched.h
> index 8db31ef..c616735 100644
> --- a/include/linux/sched.h
> +++ b/include/linux/sched.h
> @@ -1701,6 +1701,7 @@ struct task_struct {
> #ifdef CONFIG_DEBUG_ATOMIC_SLEEP
> unsigned long task_state_change;
> #endif
> + unsigned long brute_expires;
> };
>
> /* Future-safe accessor for struct task_struct's cpus_allowed. */
> diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
> index 4dc2dda..178c80e 100644
> --- a/kernel/fork.c
> +++ b/kernel/fork.c
> @@ -74,6 +74,7 @@
> #include <linux/uprobes.h>
> #include <linux/aio.h>
> #include <linux/compiler.h>
> +#include <linux/delay.h>
>
> #include <asm/pgtable.h>
> #include <asm/pgalloc.h>
> @@ -352,6 +353,8 @@ static struct task_struct *dup_task_struct(struct task_struct *orig)
> tsk->splice_pipe = NULL;
> tsk->task_frag.page = NULL;
>
> + tsk->brute_expires = 0;
> +
> account_kernel_stack(ti, 1);
>
> return tsk;
> @@ -1669,6 +1672,10 @@ long do_fork(unsigned long clone_flags,
> if (clone_flags & CLONE_PARENT_SETTID)
> put_user(nr, parent_tidptr);
>
> + if (unlikely(current->brute_expires) && time_before(get_seconds(),
> + current->brute_expires))
> + msleep(30 * 1000);
> +
> if (clone_flags & CLONE_VFORK) {
> p->vfork_done = &vfork;
> init_completion(&vfork);
> --
> 2.1.0
>

Instead of open-coding the checks here, maybe it'd make sense to
extract the "attach" and "check" logic into explicit functions that
can be CONFIG stubbed out? This is how grsec handles it via their
gr_handle_brute_* functions.

Regardless, I'm for adding this feature to mainline. :)

-Kees

--
Kees Cook
Chrome OS Security