Episode 161

Ubuntu Security Podcast

Overview

This week we take a look into BPFDoor, a newsworthy backdoor piece of malware which has been targeting Linux machines, plus we cover security updates for Bind, Vim, Firefox, PostgreSQL and more.

This week in Ubuntu Security Updates

32 unique CVEs addressed

[USN-5429-1] Bind vulnerability [00:38]

• 1 CVEs addressed in Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • CVE-2022-1183
• Only affects most recent releases
• When using bind configured with DNS over HTTPS (DoH) possible for a client to cause the server to terminate a TLS connection early and hence trigger an assertion failure within Bind -> terminates -> DoS

[USN-5430-1] GNOME Settings vulnerability [01:18]

• 1 CVEs addressed in Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • CVE-2022-1736
• GNOME includes support for desktop sharing via RDP + VNC
• By default in Ubuntu we have a no open ports policy)
• However, GNOME settings daemon contained a logic flaw where when disabling the remote desktop service via the gnome-control-center UI it would then automatically get re-enabled on next login

[USN-5424-2] OpenLDAP vulnerability [01:57]

• 1 CVEs addressed in Trusty ESM (14.04 ESM), Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)
  • CVE-2022-29155
• Episode 160
• SQL injection in the sql backend of slapd via an SQL statement within a LDAP query

[USN-5433-1] Vim vulnerabilities [02:20]

• 9 CVEs addressed in Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)
  • CVE-2022-1154
  • CVE-2022-0318
  • CVE-2022-0261
  • CVE-2021-4192
  • CVE-2021-4069
  • CVE-2021-4019
  • CVE-2021-3984
  • CVE-2021-3974
  • CVE-2021-3973
• All various instances of memory corruption vulnerabilities, where if a user was tricked into opening a specially crafted file, could then either crash Vim or possibly get code execution as the user
  • Whilst a lot of regular desktop users may not use Vim, is still often used by sysadmins to edit config files / inspect other files which they find on the machine - and in that case, this can then be a good privesc target

[USN-5432-1] libpng vulnerabilities [03:01]

• 2 CVEs addressed in Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)
  • CVE-2018-14048
  • CVE-2017-12652
• Speaking of specially crafted files :) - same for libpng - is used by many other higher level libraries / applications

[USN-5434-1] Firefox vulnerabilities [03:20]

• 2 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Impish (21.10)
  • CVE-2022-1802
  • CVE-2022-1529
• 100.0.2
• 2 vulns courtesy of ZDIs Pwn2Own - Manfred Paul - achieved code execution within the privileged component of Firefox thereby escaping Firefox’s internal sandbox - awarded $100k USD

[USN-5435-1] Thunderbird vulnerabilities [03:57]

• 11 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Impish (21.10), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • CVE-2022-19916
  • CVE-2022-1802
  • CVE-2022-1529
  • CVE-2022-1520
  • CVE-2022-29917
  • CVE-2022-29916
  • CVE-2022-29914
  • CVE-2022-29913
  • CVE-2022-29912
  • CVE-2022-29911
  • CVE-2022-29909
• 91.9.1
• Same as above plus a bunch of other recent vulns in Firefox which also apply to TB as well as a TB specific issue where it would show the wrong security status for a signed/encrypted attached message and hence could allow an attacker to trick the user into thinking the message was trustworthy

[USN-5436-1] libXrender vulnerabilities [04:28]

• 2 CVEs addressed in Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)
  • CVE-2016-7950
  • CVE-2016-7949
• Remote X server could trigger OOB write -> memory corruption -> code execution

[USN-5437-1] libXfixes vulnerability

• 1 CVEs addressed in Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)
  • CVE-2016-7944
• 32-bit platform specific issue - but roughly same as above

[USN-5438-1] HTMLDOC vulnerability [04:46]

• 1 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS)
  • CVE-2021-23165
• Used to covert HTML/Markdown files to generate EPUB/HTML/PS/PDF with ToC etc
• Crafted HTML file could trigger a heap buffer overflow -> crash/code execution

[USN-5439-1] AccountsService vulnerability [05:06]

• 1 CVEs addressed in Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • CVE-2022-1804
• Old CVE-2020-16126 was inadvertently reintroduced as the patch which fixed it got dropped accidentally
  • Episode 95

[USN-5440-1] PostgreSQL vulnerability [05:36]

• 1 CVEs addressed in Bionic (18.04 LTS), Focal (20.04 LTS), Impish (21.10), Jammy (22.04 LTS)
  • CVE-2022-1552
• Possible for an attacker who is able to create non-temp objects could then achieve SQL code execution as the superuser

[USN-5404-2] Rsyslog vulnerability [05:51]

• 1 CVEs addressed in Xenial ESM (16.04 ESM)
  • CVE-2022-24903
• Episode 159

Goings on in Linux Security Community

BPFDoor malware targeting Linux and Solaris [06:08]

• https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/cybersecurity/cyber-threat-intelligence/cyber-year-in-retrospect/yir-cyber-threats-report-download.pdf

• https://doublepulsar.com/bpfdoor-an-active-chinese-global-surveillance-tool-54b078f1a896

• https://www.sandflysecurity.com/blog/bpfdoor-an-evasive-linux-backdoor-technical-analysis/

• Malware that has been in the wild for a while (over 5 years)

• Reported on by PwC in their Cyber Threats 2021: A year in Retrospect report

  • Attribute it to a Chinese threat actor which they call Red Menshen
  • Observed targeting telco providers and govt, education and logistics via custom backdoor ‘BPFDoor’

• Stealthy - allows to backdoor a system for RCE but without opening any new network ports or firewall rules by piggy-backing on existing network facing applications

• Uses BPF filter to watching incoming packets and activate accordingly

• Earlier versions are on VT - with lots of other variants too

• Even source code too - https://pastebin.com/kmmJuuQP

• As I said - stealthy

  • deletes itself from the filesystem and renames its processes to look innocent so can hide in plain sight
  • loads BPF filter to sniff traffic
  • upon activation then will modify firewall to allow attacker direct access

• In more detail:

  • Copies itself to /dev/shm/kdmtmpflush and then forks to clean itself up to alter timestamps (timestomp) to a specific timestamp (7:17pm Thursday October 30th 2008)
  • Drops a file at /bar/run/haldrund.pid to prevent further copies of itself from running
  • Deletes itself from the /dev/shm/ ramdisk and then exits to leave the forked copy running resident in memory and then use BPF filter to watch for incoming traffic to activate

• Doesn’t appear to have any particular persistence mechanism but some reports suggest use of crontab or rc/init scripts

• By deleting itself from the ramdisk this avoids detection from filesystem scanners (although processes running from since deleted binaries are a suspicious sign themselves and can be easily detected since once the binary is removed the kernel notes this in /proc/self/exe for the process)

• Renames its argv[0] so that it looks like other commonly found processes like dbus-daemon / udevd / auditd etc

• Also wipes its environ too to try and help hide it’s activities, however this again is another suspicious activity and can easily be detected (e.g. strings on /proc/$PID/environ will show as empty which is basically never normally the case for normal processes)

• BPF filter inspects either ICMP, TCP or UDP packets and then if it has a special magic value in the first couple bytes it passes into the main packet processing routine

  • This then looks for a couple specific passwords (encrypted via RC4) - if found then sets up either a local bindshell for the attacker to connect to OR connects back to the attacker via a reverse bindshell
  • Then sets up an iptables rule to redirect traffic from the original port to the port of the bindshell on the localhost

• bindshell masquerades its process name to look like postfix as well as setting a specific environment too (including HISTFILE=/dev/null)

• Then attacker has full access to the machine (as the user)

• Reasonably advanced malware

• What is not clear is what is the initial compromise vector and then how to privesc from that to give privileges to load BPF filter on a raw socket

  • Crowdstrike blog post mentions that on Solaris CVE-2019-3010 is used to privesc via xscreensaver but this vuln is specific to Solaris platforms

• Why it is important to keep systems updated with latest patches etc.

Get in contact

• [e-mail]
• #ubuntu-security on the Libera.Chat IRC network
• ubuntu-hardened mailing list
• Security section on discourse.ubuntu.com
• @ubuntu_sec on twitter