Vulnerability: The security_context_to_sid_core function in security/selinux/ss/services.c in the Linux kernel before 3.13.4 allows local users to cause a denial of service (system crash) by leveraging the CAP_MAC_ADMIN capability to set a zero-length security context.
Vulnerability ID: CVE-2014-1874
CWE: CWE-20
Severity score: 6.9
Project: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
Published: 2014-02-28
File: security/selinux/ss/services.c
Commit message: SELinux:  Fix kernel BUG on empty security contexts.

Setting an empty security context (length=0) on a file will
lead to incorrectly dereferencing the type and other fields
of the security context structure, yielding a kernel BUG.
As a zero-length security context is never valid, just reject
all such security contexts whether coming from userspace
via setxattr or coming from the filesystem upon a getxattr
request by SELinux.

Setting a security context value (empty or otherwise) unknown to
SELinux in the first place is only possible for a root process
(CAP_MAC_ADMIN), and, if running SELinux in enforcing mode, only
if the corresponding SELinux mac_admin permission is also granted
to the domain by policy.  In Fedora policies, this is only allowed for
specific domains such as livecd for setting down security contexts
that are not defined in the build host policy.

Reproducer:
su
setenforce 0
touch foo
setfattr -n security.selinux foo

Caveat:
Relabeling or removing foo after doing the above may not be possible
without booting with SELinux disabled.  Any subsequent access to foo
after doing the above will also trigger the BUG.

BUG output from Matthew Thode:
[  473.893141] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[  473.962110] kernel BUG at security/selinux/ss/services.c:654!
[  473.995314] invalid opcode: 0000 [#6] SMP
[  474.027196] Modules linked in:
[  474.058118] CPU: 0 PID: 8138 Comm: ls Tainted: G      D   I
3.13.0-grsec #1
[  474.116637] Hardware name: Supermicro X8ST3/X8ST3, BIOS 2.0
07/29/10
[  474.149768] task: ffff8805f50cd010 ti: ffff8805f50cd488 task.ti:
ffff8805f50cd488
[  474.183707] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff814681c7>]  [<ffffffff814681c7>]
context_struct_compute_av+0xce/0x308
[  474.219954] RSP: 0018:ffff8805c0ac3c38  EFLAGS: 00010246
[  474.252253] RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff8805c0ac3d94 RCX:
0000000000000100
[  474.287018] RDX: ffff8805e8aac000 RSI: 00000000ffffffff RDI:
ffff8805e8aaa000
[  474.321199] RBP: ffff8805c0ac3cb8 R08: 0000000000000010 R09:
0000000000000006
[  474.357446] R10: 0000000000000000 R11: ffff8805c567a000 R12:
0000000000000006
[  474.419191] R13: ffff8805c2b74e88 R14: 00000000000001da R15:
0000000000000000
[  474.453816] FS:  00007f2e75220800(0000) GS:ffff88061fc00000(0000)
knlGS:0000000000000000
[  474.489254] CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
[  474.522215] CR2: 00007f2e74716090 CR3: 00000005c085e000 CR4:
00000000000207f0
[  474.556058] Stack:
[  474.584325]  ffff8805c0ac3c98 ffffffff811b549b ffff8805c0ac3c98
ffff8805f1190a40
[  474.618913]  ffff8805a6202f08 ffff8805c2b74e88 00068800d0464990
ffff8805e8aac860
[  474.653955]  ffff8805c0ac3cb8 000700068113833a ffff880606c75060
ffff8805c0ac3d94
[  474.690461] Call Trace:
[  474.723779]  [<ffffffff811b549b>] ? lookup_fast+0x1cd/0x22a
[  474.778049]  [<ffffffff81468824>] security_compute_av+0xf4/0x20b
[  474.811398]  [<ffffffff8196f419>] avc_compute_av+0x2a/0x179
[  474.843813]  [<ffffffff8145727b>] avc_has_perm+0x45/0xf4
[  474.875694]  [<ffffffff81457d0e>] inode_has_perm+0x2a/0x31
[  474.907370]  [<ffffffff81457e76>] selinux_inode_getattr+0x3c/0x3e
[  474.938726]  [<ffffffff81455cf6>] security_inode_getattr+0x1b/0x22
[  474.970036]  [<ffffffff811b057d>] vfs_getattr+0x19/0x2d
[  475.000618]  [<ffffffff811b05e5>] vfs_fstatat+0x54/0x91
[  475.030402]  [<ffffffff811b063b>] vfs_lstat+0x19/0x1b
[  475.061097]  [<ffffffff811b077e>] SyS_newlstat+0x15/0x30
[  475.094595]  [<ffffffff8113c5c1>] ? __audit_syscall_entry+0xa1/0xc3
[  475.148405]  [<ffffffff8197791e>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b
[  475.179201] Code: 00 48 85 c0 48 89 45 b8 75 02 0f 0b 48 8b 45 a0 48
8b 3d 45 d0 b6 00 8b 40 08 89 c6 ff ce e8 d1 b0 06 00 48 85 c0 49 89 c7
75 02 <0f> 0b 48 8b 45 b8 4c 8b 28 eb 1e 49 8d 7d 08 be 80 01 00 00 e8
[  475.255884] RIP  [<ffffffff814681c7>]
context_struct_compute_av+0xce/0x308
[  475.296120]  RSP <ffff8805c0ac3c38>
[  475.328734] ---[ end trace f076482e9d754adc ]---

Reported-by:  Matthew Thode <mthode@mthode.org>
Signed-off-by: Stephen Smalley <sds@tycho.nsa.gov>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <pmoore@redhat.com>
Commit author: Stephen Smalley

Vulnerable version (before fix):
 static int security_context_to_sid_core(const char *scontext, u32 scontext_len, 	struct context context; 	int rc = 0;  	if (!ss_initialized) { 		int i; 

Fixed version (after fix):
 static int security_context_to_sid_core(const char *scontext, u32 scontext_len, 	struct context context; 	int rc = 0;  	/* An empty security context is never valid. */ 	if (!scontext_len) 		return -EINVAL;  	if (!ss_initialized) { 		int i; 

Patch:
patch: @@ -1232,6 +1232,10 @@ static int security_context_to_sid_core(const char *scontext, u32 scontext_len,
 	struct context context;
 	int rc = 0;
 
+	/* An empty security context is never valid. */
+	if (!scontext_len)
+		return -EINVAL;
+
 	if (!ss_initialized) {
 		int i;
path: security/selinux/ss/services.c