Red Hat Linux iSCSI Subsystem Vulnerability Report

VerSprite is proud to partner with GRIMM to provide proof of concept, remediation, and business impact for the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux Zero Day.

Red Hat Linux iSCI Subsystem Vulnerability Summary

VerSprite cybersecurity has tested and confirmed several new vulnerabilities discovered by GRIMM that affect the Linux iSCSI subsystem. Two of these vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-27365 and CVE-2021-27363) can be used together for a Local Privilege Escalation, which allows a normal user to gain root privileges, while the third (CVE-2021-27364) can be used for a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. VerSprite has confirmed that unpatched Workstation and Server with GUI installations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS Linux versions 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 are vulnerable. These versions are vulnerable due to their auto-loading of the libiscsi kernel module. Other Linux distributions and versions are likely vulnerable if they meet the conditions of the exploit.

VULNERABILITIES LIST

• Heap buffer overflow (CVE-2021-27365)
• Kernel pointer leak (CVE-2021-27363)
• Out-of-bounds kernel memory read (CVE-2021-27364)

iSCSI VULNERABILITY IMPACT

An authenticated attacker with normal user privileges can escalate to root privileges or perform a local DoS attack on the system.

RISK LEVEL

AFFECTED LINUX VENDORS

CentOS 8 / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 with the following installations:

• Workstation
• Virtualized Hosts
• Server with GUI

More Linux distributions are possibly vulnerable, but VerSprite has not been able to confirm yet. The aforementioned installations are vulnerable due to those configurations loading the iSCSI kernel modules by default.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are distributions of the Linux operating system.

REMEDIATION SOLUTIONS

CentOS 8 / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 with the following installations:

• Update any affected systems.
• Prevent the libiscsi kernel module from loading if iSCSI devices are not present: https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2021-27363 and https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278
• Removal of iSCSI kernel modules if not required.
• For CentOS and RHEL systems, ensure the rdma-core package is not installed if not in use.

PROOF OF CONCEPT: RED HAT LINUX iSCI ZERO DAY

GRIMM researchers have provided a Proof of Concept (PoC) to demonstrate the exploitability of the vulnerabilities found. During research and testing, VerSprite developed a detection script to be used in conjunction with the PoC exploit to simplify the process. It is highly advised to use these in a test environment and not on production systems.

VerSprite’s detection script can be downloaded from https://github.com/VerSprite/NotQuite0DayFriday/tree/trunk/2021.03.12-linux-iscsi

VERSPRITE DETECTION SCRIPT

The provided python script requires root privileges to run, with a non-root username passed as a command argument to use for privilege escalation.

Example: To run the following command from a user with sudo privileges, replace with an existing de-privileged user on the target system.

$ sudo python3 detect_iscsi_vuln.py

Running the detection script on CentOS 8.3

GRIMM PoC

Once the PoC package is downloaded and extracted, start a command line session and move to the exploit’s build directory.

INSTALL REQUIRED PACKAGES

$ sudo yum install -y make gcc

BUILD EXPLOIT

$ make

COPY PAYLOAD

$ cp a.sh /tmp/

GRANT PAYLOAD EXECUTION PERMISSIONS

$ chmod + x /tmp/a.sh

Preparing the PoC

RUN EXPLOIT

NOTE: This step may require a few attempts to run successfully.
$ ./exploit

Running the exploit

VIEW RESULTS

$ ls -l /tmp/proof

Viewing proof

INDICATORS OF THE LINUX iSCI SUBSYSTEM COMPROMISE

VerSprite advises writing Yara rules in your SIEM to detect the following items on any Linux host in your environment.

• The following iSCSI and InfiniBand folders are created in the /sys/class directory when this specific PoC code is ran. These are artifacts of current known exploits.
  • iscsi_connection
  • iscsi_endpoint
  • iscsi_host
  • iscsi_iface
  • iscsi_session
  • iscsi_transport
  • infiniband
  • infiniband_cm
  • infiniband_mad
  • infiniband_srp
  • infiniband_verbs
• System log messages: “localhost kernel: fill read buffer: dev attr show+0x0/0x40 returned bad count” does not indicate certainly that these vulnerabilities were exploited but does indicate that a buffer overflow has occurred.
• Presence of iSCSI subsystem modules loaded on systems with no attached iSCSI devices.

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