[Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S III Developer Discussion ] alephzain:
EDIT: For general discussion about this topic, please post in the following location (and not here): http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2057818

Now find a one-click root application at http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2130276. More exploits coming.

Hi,

Recently discover a way to obtain root on S3 without ODIN flashing.

The security hole is in kernel, exactly with the device /dev/exynos-mem.

This device is R/W by all users and give access to all physical memory :confused: ... what's wrong with Samsung ?

Its like /dev/mem but for all.

Three libraries seems to use /dev/exynos-mem:

/system/lib/hw/camera.smdk4x12.so

/system/lib/hw/gralloc.smdk4x12.so

/system/lib/libhdmi.so

Many devices are concerned :

Samsung Galaxy S2

Samsung Galxy Note 2

MEIZU MX

potentialy all devices who embed exynos processor (4210 and 4412) which use Samsung kernel sources.

The good news is we can easily obtain root on these devices and the bad is there is no control over it.

Ram dump, kernel code injection and others could be possible via app installation from Play Store. It certainly exists many ways

to do that but Samsung give an easy way to exploit. This security hole is dangerous and expose phone to malicious apps.

Exploitation with native C and JNI could be easily feasible.

Edited

Some details :

/dev/exynos-mem seems to be used for graphic usage like camera, graphic memory allocation, hdmi.

By activating pid display in kmsg, surfaceflinger do mmap on the device (via one of the three shared libraries above ?? I have not see reference in binary to these libraires)

The operations allowed on the device are (from linux/drivers/char/mem.c) :

static const struct file_operations exynos_mem_fops = {
.open = exynos_mem_open,
.release = exynos_mem_release,
.unlocked_ioctl = exynos_mem_ioctl,
.mmap = exynos_mem_mmap,
}

and the default permissions (from linux/drivers/char/mem.c) :

#ifdef CONFIG_EXYNOS_MEM
[14] = {"exynos-mem", S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR | S_IRGRP | S_IWGRP | S_IROTH
| S_IWOTH, &exynos_mem_fops},
#endif

ioctl request on /dev/exynos-mem permit to clean / flush L1 and L2 cache, set non cacheable page memory and set physical memory address for use with mmap.

Now the interesting part : mmap operation.

The only limit is to restrict access to lowmem (from linux/drivers/char/exynos-mem.c) :

/* TODO: currently lowmem is only avaiable */
if ((phys_to_virt(start) < (void *)PAGE_OFFSET) ||
(phys_to_virt(start) >= high_memory)) {
pr_err("[%s] invalid paddr(0x%08x)\n", __func__, start);
return -EINVAL;
}

The comment in above code could be frightening.

And an eye in Documentation/arm/memory.txt say :

Start End Use
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAGE_OFFSET high_memory-1 Kernel direct-mapped RAM region.
This maps the platforms RAM, and typically
maps all platform RAM in a 1:1 relationship.

In other words, this device only permit to own the physical memory including kernel code.

The question is why permissions are set to read/write for all in kernel AND in ueventd.smdk4x12.rc:

samsung developper in charge of this would lose his job

some samsung apps with basic rights need to access it (I doubt it)

a huge mistake

A simple patch could be to set permissions to 0660 or 0600 in ueventd.smdk4x12.rc, but I don't know how it would affect samsung applications/services.

In attachment, binary and source to obtain for root shell.