CVE-2016-7917: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor (CWE-200)
value: The nfnetlink_rcv_batch function in net/netfilter/nfnetlink.c in the Linux kernel before 4.5 does not check whether a batch message's length field is large enough, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information from kernel memory or cause a denial of service (infinite loop or out-of-bounds read) by leveraging the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.
CWE description: The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
CVSS v3 base score: 5
Published: 2016-11-16T05:59Z
Repository: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
Language: C
Files changed: net/netfilter/nfnetlink.c
Commit date: 2016-02-08 12:56:54 +0100
Commit message: netfilter: nfnetlink: correctly validate length of batch messages

If nlh->nlmsg_len is zero then an infinite loop is triggered because
'skb_pull(skb, msglen);' pulls zero bytes.

The calculation in nlmsg_len() underflows if 'nlh->nlmsg_len <
NLMSG_HDRLEN' which bypasses the length validation and will later
trigger an out-of-bound read.

If the length validation does fail then the malformed batch message is
copied back to userspace. However, we cannot do this because the
nlh->nlmsg_len can be invalid. This leads to an out-of-bounds read in
netlink_ack:

    [   41.455421] ==================================================================
    [   41.456431] BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in memcpy+0x1d/0x40 at addr ffff880119e79340
    [   41.456431] Read of size 4294967280 by task a.out/987
    [   41.456431] =============================================================================
    [   41.456431] BUG kmalloc-512 (Not tainted): kasan: bad access detected
    [   41.456431] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ...
    [   41.456431] Bytes b4 ffff880119e79310: 00 00 00 00 d5 03 00 00 b0 fb fe ff 00 00 00 00  ................
    [   41.456431] Object ffff880119e79320: 20 00 00 00 10 00 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ...............
    [   41.456431] Object ffff880119e79330: 14 00 0a 00 01 03 fc 40 45 56 11 22 33 10 00 05  .......@EV."3...
    [   41.456431] Object ffff880119e79340: f0 ff ff ff 88 99 aa bb 00 14 00 0a 00 06 fe fb  ................
                                            ^^ start of batch nlmsg with
                                               nlmsg_len=4294967280
    ...
    [   41.456431] Memory state around the buggy address:
    [   41.456431]  ffff880119e79400: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
    [   41.456431]  ffff880119e79480: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
    [   41.456431] >ffff880119e79500: 00 00 00 00 fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc
    [   41.456431]                                ^
    [   41.456431]  ffff880119e79580: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc
    [   41.456431]  ffff880119e79600: fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fc fb fb fb fb fb fb
    [   41.456431] ==================================================================

Fix this with better validation of nlh->nlmsg_len and by setting
NFNL_BATCH_FAILURE if any batch message fails length validation.

CAP_NET_ADMIN is required to trigger the bugs.

Fixes: 9ea2aa8b7dba ("netfilter: nfnetlink: validate nfnetlink header from batch")
Signed-off-by: Phil Turnbull <phil.turnbull@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@netfilter.org>

Diff: diff --git a/net/netfilter/nfnetlink.c b/net/netfilter/nfnetlink.c
index 62e92af2384a1..857ae89633aff 100644
--- a/net/netfilter/nfnetlink.c
+++ b/net/netfilter/nfnetlink.c
@@ -326,14 +326,16 @@ static void nfnetlink_rcv_batch(struct sk_buff *skb, struct nlmsghdr *nlh,
 		int msglen, type;
 
 		nlh = nlmsg_hdr(skb);
 		err = 0;
 
-		if (nlmsg_len(nlh) < sizeof(struct nfgenmsg) ||
-		    skb->len < nlh->nlmsg_len) {
-			err = -EINVAL;
-			goto ack;
+		if (nlh->nlmsg_len < NLMSG_HDRLEN ||
+		    skb->len < nlh->nlmsg_len ||
+		    nlmsg_len(nlh) < sizeof(struct nfgenmsg)) {
+			nfnl_err_reset(&err_list);
+			status |= NFNL_BATCH_FAILURE;
+			goto done;
 		}
 
 		/* Only requests are handled by the kernel */
 		if (!(nlh->nlmsg_flags & NLM_F_REQUEST)) {
 			err = -EINVAL;

Vulnerable code: 		if (nlmsg_len(nlh) < sizeof(struct nfgenmsg) ||
		    skb->len < nlh->nlmsg_len) {
			err = -EINVAL;
			goto ack;
Fixed code: 		if (nlh->nlmsg_len < NLMSG_HDRLEN ||
		    skb->len < nlh->nlmsg_len ||
		    nlmsg_len(nlh) < sizeof(struct nfgenmsg)) {
			nfnl_err_reset(&err_list);
			status |= NFNL_BATCH_FAILURE;
			goto done;