CVE-2016-7916 (published 2016-11-16T05:59Z)

Race condition in the environ_read function in fs/proc/base.c in the Linux kernel before 4.5.4 allows local users to obtain sensitive information from kernel memory by reading a /proc/*/environ file during a process-setup time interval in which environment-variable copying is incomplete.

Severity: MEDIUM
CVSS v2 base score: 4.7 (AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:N/A:N)
CVSS v3 base score: 5.5, MEDIUM (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N)

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: Mathias Krause
author_date: 2016-05-05 16:22:26-07:00
msg: proc: prevent accessing /proc/<PID>/environ until it's ready

If /proc/<PID>/environ gets read before the envp[] array is fully set up
in create_{aout,elf,elf_fdpic,flat}_tables(), we might end up trying to
read more bytes than are actually written, as env_start will already be
set but env_end will still be zero, making the range calculation
underflow, allowing to read beyond the end of what has been written.

Fix this as it is done for /proc/<PID>/cmdline by testing env_end for
zero.  It is, apparently, intentionally set last in create_*_tables().

This bug was found by the PaX size_overflow plugin that detected the
arithmetic underflow of 'this_len = env_end - (env_start + src)' when
env_end is still zero.

The expected consequence is that userland trying to access
/proc/<PID>/environ of a not yet fully set up process may get
inconsistent data as we're in the middle of copying in the environment
variables.

Fixes: https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4363
Fixes: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116461
Signed-off-by: Mathias Krause <minipli@googlemail.com>
Cc: Emese Revfy <re.emese@gmail.com>
Cc: Pax Team <pageexec@freemail.hu>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Mateusz Guzik <mguzik@redhat.com>
Cc: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@openvz.org>
Cc: Jarod Wilson <jarod@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.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: base.c
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -955,7 +955,8 @@ static ssize_t environ_read(struct file *file, char __user *buf,
 	struct mm_struct *mm = file->private_data;
 	unsigned long env_start, env_end;
 
-	if (!mm)
+	/* Ensure the process spawned far enough to have an environment. */
+	if (!mm || !mm->env_end)
 		return 0;
 
 	page = (char *)__get_free_page(GFP_TEMPORARY);

programming_language: C