CVE-2014-0196 (published 2014-05-07T10:55Z)

The n_tty_write function in drivers/tty/n_tty.c in the Linux kernel through 3.14.3 does not properly manage tty driver access in the "LECHO & !OPOST" case, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and system crash) or gain privileges by triggering a race condition involving read and write operations with long strings.

Severity: MEDIUM
CVSS v2 base score: 6.9 (AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C)

Weakness information:
cwe_id: CWE-362
cwe_name: Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition')
description: The product contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently.
extended_description: 
            This can have security implications when the expected synchronization is in security-critical code, such as recording whether a user is authenticated or modifying important state information that should not be influenced by an outsider.
            A race condition occurs within concurrent environments, and is effectively a property of a code sequence. Depending on the context, a code sequence may be in the form of a function call, a small number of instructions, a series of program invocations, etc.
            A race condition violates these properties, which are closely related:
               
                  Exclusivity - the code sequence is given exclusive access to the shared resource, i.e., no other code sequence can modify properties of the shared resource before the original sequence has completed execution.
                  Atomicity - the code sequence is behaviorally atomic, i.e., no other thread or process can concurrently execute the same sequence of instructions (or a subset) against the same resource.
               
            A race condition exists when an "interfering code sequence" can still access the shared resource, violating exclusivity. Programmers may assume that certain code sequences execute too quickly to be affected by an interfering code sequence; when they are not, this violates atomicity. For example, the single "x++" statement may appear atomic at the code layer, but it is actually non-atomic at the instruction layer, since it involves a read (the original value of x), followed by a computation (x+1), followed by a write (save the result to x).
            The interfering code sequence could be "trusted" or "untrusted." A trusted interfering code sequence occurs within the product; it cannot be modified by the attacker, and it can only be invoked indirectly. An untrusted interfering code sequence can be authored directly by the attacker, and typically it is external to the vulnerable product.
         
         

Fix information:
repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
commit_details: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
author: Peter Hurley
author_date: 2014-05-03 14:04:59+02:00
msg: n_tty: Fix n_tty_write crash when echoing in raw mode

The tty atomic_write_lock does not provide an exclusion guarantee for
the tty driver if the termios settings are LECHO & !OPOST.  And since
it is unexpected and not allowed to call TTY buffer helpers like
tty_insert_flip_string concurrently, this may lead to crashes when
concurrect writers call pty_write. In that case the following two
writers:
* the ECHOing from a workqueue and
* pty_write from the process
race and can overflow the corresponding TTY buffer like follows.

If we look into tty_insert_flip_string_fixed_flag, there is:
  int space = __tty_buffer_request_room(port, goal, flags);
  struct tty_buffer *tb = port->buf.tail;
  ...
  memcpy(char_buf_ptr(tb, tb->used), chars, space);
  ...
  tb->used += space;

so the race of the two can result in something like this:
              A                                B
__tty_buffer_request_room
                                  __tty_buffer_request_room
memcpy(buf(tb->used), ...)
tb->used += space;
                                  memcpy(buf(tb->used), ...) ->BOOM

B's memcpy is past the tty_buffer due to the previous A's tb->used
increment.

Since the N_TTY line discipline input processing can output
concurrently with a tty write, obtain the N_TTY ldisc output_lock to
serialize echo output with normal tty writes.  This ensures the tty
buffer helper tty_insert_flip_string is not called concurrently and
everything is fine.

Note that this is nicely reproducible by an ordinary user using
forkpty and some setup around that (raw termios + ECHO). And it is
present in kernels at least after commit
d945cb9cce20ac7143c2de8d88b187f62db99bdc (pty: Rework the pty layer to
use the normal buffering logic) in 2.6.31-rc3.

js: add more info to the commit log
js: switch to bool
js: lock unconditionally
js: lock only the tty->ops->write call

References: CVE-2014-0196
Reported-and-tested-by: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Peter Hurley <peter@hurleysoftware.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
repository: repo_url: https://github.com/torvalds/linux
repo_name: torvalds/linux
description: Linux kernel source tree
repo_language: C
owner: torvalds
file_changes: filename: n_tty.c
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -2353,8 +2353,12 @@ static ssize_t n_tty_write(struct tty_struct *tty, struct file *file,
 			if (tty->ops->flush_chars)
 				tty->ops->flush_chars(tty);
 		} else {
+			struct n_tty_data *ldata = tty->disc_data;
+
 			while (nr > 0) {
+				mutex_lock(&ldata->output_lock);
 				c = tty->ops->write(tty, b, nr);
+				mutex_unlock(&ldata->output_lock);
 				if (c < 0) {
 					retval = c;
 					goto break_out;

programming_language: C