Buffer overflow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomaly where a program, while writing data to abuffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent memory. This is a special case of violation of memory safety. Buffer overflows can be triggered by inputs that are designed to execute code, or alter the way the program operates. This may result in erratic program behavior, including memory access errors, incorrect results, a crash, or a breach of system security. Thus, they are the basis of many software vulnerabilities and can be maliciously exploited. Programming languages commonly associated with buffer overflows include C and C++, which provide no builtin protection against accessing or overwriting data in any part of memory and do not automatically check that data written to an array (the built-in buffer type) is within the boundaries of that array. Bounds checking can prevent buffer overflows.
Contents
[hide]

1 Technical description

1.1 Example

2 Exploitation

o o o o

2.1 Stack-based exploitation 2.2 Heap-based exploitation 2.3 Barriers to exploitation 2.4 Practicalities of exploitation

2.4.1 NOP sled technique 2.4.2 The jump to address stored in a register technique

3 Protective countermeasures

o o o o o o o

3.1 Choice of programming language 3.2 Use of safe libraries 3.3 Buffer overflow protection 3.4 Pointer protection 3.5 Executable space protection 3.6 Address space layout randomization 3.7 Deep packet inspection

4 History 5 See also 6 Notes 7 External links

Technical description[edit source | editbeta]

A buffer overflow occurs when data written to a buffer also corrupts data values in memory addresses adjacent to the destination buffer due to insufficient bounds checking. This can occur when copying data from one buffer to another without first checking that the data fits within the destination buffer.

Example[edit source | editbeta]

In the following example, a program has two data items which are adjacent in memory: an 8-byte-long string buffer, A, and a two-bytebig-endian integer, B. char A[8] = {};

unsigned short B = 1979; Initially, A contains nothing but zero bytes, and B contains the number 1979.

variable name

value

[null string]

1979

hex value

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

07

BB

Now, the program attempts to store the null-terminated string "excessive" with ASCII encoding in the A buffer. strcpy(A, "excessive");

"excessive" is 9 characters long and encodes to 10 bytes including the terminator, but A can take only 8 bytes.
By failing to check the length of the string, it also overwrites the value of B:

variable name

value

'e'

'x'

'c'

'e'

's'

's'

'i'

'v'

25856

hex

65

78

63

65

73

73

69

76

65

00

B's value has now been inadverently replaced by a number formed from part of the character string. In this example "e" followed by a zero byte would become 25856. Writing data past the end of allocated memory can sometimes be detected by the operating system to generate a segmentation faulterror that terminates the process. For more details on stack-based overflows, see Stack buffer overflow.

Exploitation[edit source | editbeta]

The techniques to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability vary per architecture, operating system and memory region. For example, exploitation on the heap (used for dynamically allocated memory), is very different from exploitation on the call stack.

Stack-based exploitation[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Stack buffer overflow A technically inclined user may exploit stack-based buffer overflows to manipulate the program to their advantage in one of several ways:

By overwriting a local variable that is near the buffer in memory on the stack to change the behavior of the program which may benefit the attacker.

By overwriting the return address in a stack frame. Once the function returns, execution will resume at the return address as specified by the attacker, usually a user input filled buffer.

By overwriting a function pointer,[1] or exception handler, which is subsequently executed. By overwriting a parameter of a different stack frame or a non local address pointed to in the current stack context.[2]

With a method called "trampolining", if the address of the user-supplied data is unknown, but the location is stored in a register, then the return address can be overwritten with the address of an opcode which will cause execution to jump to the user supplied data. If the location is stored in a register R, then a jump to the location containing the opcode for a jump R, call R or similar instruction, will cause execution of user supplied data. The locations of suitable opcodes, or bytes in memory, can be found in DLLs or the executable itself. However the address of the opcode typically cannot contain any null characters and the locations of these opcodes can vary between applications and versions of the operating system. The Metasploit Project is one such database of suitable opcodes, though only those found in the Windows operating system are listed.[3] Stack-based buffer overflows are not to be confused with stack overflows. Also note that these vulnerabilities are usually discovered through the use of a fuzzer.[4]

Heap-based exploitation[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Heap overflow A buffer overflow occurring in the heap data area is referred to as a heap overflow and is exploitable in a manner different from that of stack-based overflows. Memory on the heap is dynamically allocated by the application at run-time and typically contains program data. Exploitation is performed by corrupting this data in specific ways to cause the application to overwrite internal structures such as linked list pointers. The canonical heap overflow technique overwrites dynamic memory allocation linkage (such as malloc meta data) and uses the resulting pointer exchange to overwrite a program function pointer. Microsoft's GDI+ vulnerability in handling JPEGs is an example of the danger a heap overflow can present.[5]

Barriers to exploitation[edit source | editbeta]

Manipulation of the buffer, which occurs before it is read or executed, may lead to the failure of an exploitation attempt. These manipulations can mitigate the threat of exploitation, but may not make it impossible. Manipulations could include conversion to upper or lower case, removal of metacharacters and filtering out of non-alphanumeric strings. However, techniques exist to bypass these filters and manipulations; alphanumeric code, polymorphic code, self-modifying code and return-to-libc attacks. The same methods can be used to avoid detection by intrusion detection systems. In some cases, including where code is converted into unicode,[6] the threat of the vulnerability have been misrepresented by the disclosers as only Denial of Service when in fact the remote execution of arbitrary code is possible.

Practicalities of exploitation[edit source | editbeta]

In real-world exploits there are a variety of challenges which need to be overcome for exploits to operate reliably. These factors include null bytes in addresses, variability in the location of shellcode, differences between environments and various counter-measures in operation.

NOP sled technique[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: NOP slide

Illustration of a NOP-sled payload on the stack.

A NOP-sled is the oldest and most widely known technique for successfully exploiting a stack buffer overflow.[7] It solves the problem of finding the exact address of the buffer by effectively increasing the size of the target area. To do this, much larger sections of the stack are corrupted with the no-op machine instruction. At the end of the attacker-supplied data, after the no-op instructions, the attacker places an instruction to perform a relative jump to the top of the buffer where the shellcode is located. This collection of no-ops is referred to as the "NOP-sled" because if the return address is overwritten with any address within the no-op region of the buffer it will "slide" down the no-ops until it is redirected to the actual malicious code by the jump at the end. This technique requires the attacker to guess where on the stack the NOP-sled is instead of the comparatively small shellcode.[8] Because of the popularity of this technique, many vendors of intrusion prevention systems will search for this pattern of no-op machine instructions in an attempt to detect shellcode in use. It is important to note that a NOP-sled does not necessarily contain only traditional no-op machine instructions; any instruction that does not

corrupt the machine state to a point where the shellcode will not run can be used in place of the hardware assisted no-op. As a result it has become common practice for exploit writers to compose the no-op sled with randomly chosen instructions which will have no real effect on the shellcode execution. [9] While this method greatly improves the chances that an attack will be successful, it is not without problems. Exploits using this technique still must rely on some amount of luck that they will guess offsets on the stack that are within the NOP-sled region.[10] An incorrect guess will usually result in the target program crashing and could alert the system administrator to the attacker's activities. Another problem is that the NOP-sled requires a much larger amount of memory in which to hold a NOP-sled large enough to be of any use. This can be a problem when the allocated size of the affected buffer is too small and the current depth of the stack is shallow (i.e. there is not much space from the end of the current stack frame to the start of the stack). Despite its problems, the NOP-sled is often the only method that will work for a given platform, environment, or situation; as such it is still an important technique.

The jump to address stored in a register technique[edit source | editbeta]

The "jump to register" technique allows for reliable exploitation of stack buffer overflows without the need for extra room for a NOP-sled and without having to guess stack offsets. The strategy is to overwrite the return pointer with something that will cause the program to jump to a known pointer stored within a register which points to the controlled buffer and thus the shellcode. For example, if register A contains a pointer to the start of a buffer then any jump or call taking that register as an operand can be used to gain control of the flow of execution.[11]

An instruction from ntdll.dll to call the DbgPrint()routine contains the i386 machine opcode for jmp esp.

In practice a program may not intentionally contain instructions to jump to a particular register. The traditional solution is to find an unintentional instance of a suitable opcode at a fixed location somewhere within the program memory. In figure E on the left you can see an example of such an unintentional instance of the i386 jmp esp instruction. The opcode for this instruction is FF E4.[12] This two byte sequence can be found at a one byte offset from the start of the instruction call DbgPrint at address 0x7C941EED. If an attacker overwrites the program return address with this address the program will first jump to 0x7C941EED, interpret

the opcode FF E4 as the jmp espinstruction, and will then jump to the top of the stack and execute the attacker's code.[13] When this technique is possible the severity of the vulnerability increases considerably. This is because exploitation will work reliably enough to automate an attack with a virtual guarantee of success when it is run. For this reason, this is the technique most commonly used in Internet worms that exploit stack buffer overflow vulnerabilities.[14] This method also allows shellcode to be placed after the overwritten return address on the Windows platform. Since executables are mostly based at address 0x00400000 and x86 is a Little Endian architecture, the last byte of the return address must be a null, which terminates the buffer copy and nothing is written beyond that. This limits the size of the shellcode to the size of the buffer, which may be overly restrictive. DLLs are located in high memory (above 0x01000000) and so have addresses containing no null bytes, so this method can remove null bytes (or other disallowed characters) from the overwritten return address. Used in this way, the method is often referred to as "DLL Trampolining".

Protective countermeasures[edit source | editbeta]

Various techniques have been used to detect or prevent buffer overflows, with various tradeoffs. The most reliable way to avoid or prevent buffer overflows is to use automatic protection at the language level. This sort of protection, however, cannot be applied to legacy code, and often technical, business, or cultural constraints call for a vulnerable language. The following sections describe the choices and implementations available.

Choice of programming language[edit source | editbeta]

The choice of programming language can have a profound effect on the occurrence of buffer overflows. As of 2008, among the most popular languages are C and its derivative, C++, with a vast body of software having been written in these languages. C and C++ provide no built-in protection against accessing or overwriting data in any part of memory; more specifically, they do not check that data written to a buffer is within the boundaries of that buffer. However, the standard C++ libraries provide many ways of safely buffering data, and techniques to avoid buffer overflows also exist for C. Many other programming languages provide runtime checking and in some cases even compile-time checking which might send a warning or raise an exception when C or C++ would overwrite data and continue to execute further instructions until erroneous results are obtained which might or might not cause the program to crash. Examples of such languages include Ada, Eiffel, Lisp, Modula-2,Smalltalk, OCaml and such C-derivatives as Cyclone, Rust and D. The Java and .NET Framework bytecode environments also require bounds checking on all arrays. Nearly every interpreted language will protect against buffer overflows, signalling a well-defined error condition. Often where a language provides enough type information to do bounds checking an option is provided to enable or disable it.Static code analysis can remove many dynamic bound and type checks, but

poor implementations and awkward cases can significantly decrease performance. Software engineers must carefully consider the tradeoffs of safety versus performance costs when deciding which language and compiler setting to use.

Use of safe libraries[edit source | editbeta]

The problem of buffer overflows is common in the C and C++ languages because they expose low level representational details of buffers as containers for data types. Buffer overflows must thus be avoided by maintaining a high degree of correctness in code which performs buffer management. It has also long been recommended to avoid standard library functions which are not bounds checked, such as gets, scanf and strcpy. The Morris worm exploited a gets call in fingerd.[15] Well-written and tested abstract data type libraries which centralize and automatically perform buffer management, including bounds checking, can reduce the occurrence and impact of buffer overflows. The two main building-block data types in these languages in which buffer overflows commonly occur are strings and arrays; thus, libraries preventing buffer overflows in these data types can provide the vast majority of the necessary coverage. Still, failure to use these safe libraries correctly can result in buffer overflows and other vulnerabilities; and naturally, any bug in the library itself is a potential vulnerability. "Safe" library implementations include "The Better String Library",[16] Vstr [17] and Erwin.[18] The OpenBSD operating system's C library provides the strlcpy and strlcat functions, but these are more limited than full safe library implementations. In September 2007, Technical Report 24731, prepared by the C standards committee, was published; [citation
needed]

it specifies a set of functions which are based on the standard C library's string and I/O functions, with

additional buffer-size parameters. However, the efficacy of these functions for the purpose of reducing buffer overflows is disputable; it requires programmer intervention on a per function call basis that is equivalent to intervention that could make the analogous older standard library functions buffer overflow safe. [19]

Buffer overflow protection[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Buffer overflow protection Buffer overflow protection is used to detect the most common buffer overflows by checking that the stack has not been altered when a function returns. If it has been altered, the program exits with a segmentation fault. Three such systems are Libsafe,[20] and theStackGuard[21] and ProPolice[22] gcc patches. Microsoft's Data Execution Prevention mode explicitly protects the pointer to the SEH Exception Handler from being overwritten.[23] Stronger stack protection is possible by splitting the stack in two: one for data and one for function returns. This split is present in theForth language, though it was not a security-based design decision. Regardless, this is not a complete solution to buffer overflows, as sensitive data other than the return address may still be overwritten.

Pointer protection[edit source | editbeta]

Buffer overflows work by manipulating pointers (including stored addresses). PointGuard was proposed as a compiler-extension to prevent attackers from being able to reliably manipulate pointers and addresses. [24] The approach works by having the compiler add code to automatically XOR-encode pointers before and after they are used. Because the attacker (theoretically) does not know what value will be used to encode/decode the pointer, he cannot predict what it will point to if he overwrites it with a new value. PointGuard was never released, but Microsoft implemented a similar approach beginning in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1.[25]Rather than implement pointer protection as an automatic feature, Microsoft added an API routine that can be called at the discretion of the programmer. This allows for better performance (because it is not used all of the time), but places the burden on the programmer to know when it is necessary. Because XOR is linear, an attacker may be able to manipulate an encoded pointer by overwriting only the lower bytes of an address. This can allow an attack to succeed if the attacker is able to attempt the exploit multiple times and/or is able to complete an attack by causing a pointer to point to one of several locations (such as any location within a NOP sled).[26] Microsoft added a random rotation to their encoding scheme to address this weakness to partial overwrites.[27]

Executable space protection[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Executable space protection Executable space protection is an approach to buffer overflow protection which prevents execution of code on the stack or the heap. An attacker may use buffer overflows to insert arbitrary code into the memory of a program, but with executable space protection, any attempt to execute that code will cause an exception. Some CPUs support a feature called NX ("No eXecute") or XD ("eXecute Disabled") bit, which in conjunction with software, can be used to mark pages of data (such as those containing the stack and the heap) as readable and writeable but not executable. Some Unix operating systems (e.g. OpenBSD, Mac OS X) ship with executable space protection (e.g. W^X). Some optional packages include:

PaX[28] Exec Shield[29] Openwall[30]

Newer variants of Microsoft Windows also support executable space protection, called Data Execution Prevention.[31] Proprietary add-ons include:

BufferShield[32]

StackDefender[33]

Executable space protection does not generally protect against return-to-libc attacks, or any other attack which does not rely on the execution of the attackers code. However, on 64-bit systems using ASLR, as described below, executable space protection makes it far more difficult to execute such attacks.

Address space layout randomization[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Address space layout randomization Address space layout randomization (ASLR) is a computer security feature which involves arranging the positions of key data areas, usually including the base of the executable and position of libraries, heap, and stack, randomly in a process' address space. Randomization of the virtual memory addresses at which functions and variables can be found can make exploitation of a buffer overflow more difficult, but not impossible. It also forces the attacker to tailor the exploitation attempt to the individual system, which foils the attempts of internet worms.[34] A similar but less effective method is to rebase processes and libraries in the virtual address space.

Deep packet inspection[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Deep packet inspection The use of deep packet inspection (DPI) can detect, at the network perimeter, very basic remote attempts to exploit buffer overflows by use of attack signatures and heuristics. These are able to block packets which have the signature of a known attack, or if a long series of No-Operation instructions (known as a nop-sled) is detected, these were once used when the location of the exploit's payload is slightly variable. Packet scanning is not an effective method since it can only prevent known attacks and there are many ways that a 'nop-sled' can be encoded. Shellcode used by attackers can be made alphanumeric, metamorphic, or self-modifying to evade detection by heuristic packet scanners and intrusion detection systems.

History[edit source | editbeta]

Buffer overflows were understood and partially publicly documented as early as 1972, when the Computer Security Technology Planning Study laid out the technique: "The code performing this function does not check the source and destination addresses properly, permitting portions of the monitor to be overlaid by the user. This can be used to inject code into the monitor that will permit the user to seize control of the machine." (Page 61)[35] Today, the monitor would be referred to as the kernel. The earliest documented hostile exploitation of a buffer overflow was in 1988. It was one of several exploits used by the Morris worm to propagate itself over the Internet. The program exploited was a service on Unix called finger.[36] Later, in 1995, Thomas Lopatic independently rediscovered the buffer overflow and published his findings on the Bugtraq security mailing list.[37] A year later, in 1996,Elias Levy (aka

Aleph One) published in Phrack magazine the paper "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit",[38] a step-by-step introduction to exploiting stack-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Since then, at least two major internet worms have exploited buffer overflows to compromise a large number of systems. In 2001, theCode Red worm exploited a buffer overflow in Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0[39] and in 2003 the SQL Slammer worm compromised machines running Microsoft SQL Server 2000.[40] In 2003, buffer overflows present in licensed Xbox games have been exploited to allow unlicensed software, including homebrew games, to run on the console without the need for hardware modifications, known as modchips.[41] The PS2 Independence Exploit also used a buffer overflow to achieve the same for the PlayStation 2. The Twilight hack accomplished the same with the Wii, using a buffer overflow in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Missingno is an example of a buffer overflow having a cultural reaction.

Buffer Overflows
Development Guide Table of Contents
Contents
[hide]

1 Objective 2 Platforms Affected 3 Relevant COBIT Topics 4 Description 5 General Prevention Techniques 6 Stack Overflow

o o

6.1 How to determine if you are vulnerable 6.2 How to protect yourself

7 Heap Overflow

o o

7.1 How to determine if you are vulnerable 7.2 How to protect yourself

8 Format String

o o

8.1 How to determine if you are vulnerable 8.2 How to protect yourself

9 Unicode Overflow

9.1 How to determine if you are vulnerable

9.2 How to protect yourself

10 Integer Overflow

o o

10.1 How to determine if you are vulnerable 10.2 How to protect yourself

11 Further reading

Objective
To ensure that:

Applications do not expose themselves to faulty components. Applications create as few buffer overflows as possible. Developers are encouraged to use languages and frameworks that are relatively immune to buffer overflows.

Platforms Affected
Almost every platform, with the following notable exceptions:

Java/J2EE as long as native methods or system calls are not invoked. .NET as long as unsafe or unmanaged code is not invoked (such as the use of P/Invoke or COM Interop). PHP, Python, Perl as long as external programs or vulnerable extensions are not used.

Relevant COBIT Topics

DS11.9 Data processing integrity.

Description
Attackers generally use buffer overflows to corrupt the execution stack of a web application. By sending carefully crafted input to a web application, an attacker can cause the web application to execute arbitrary code, possibly taking over the machine. Attackers have managed to identify buffer overflows in a staggering array of products and components. Buffer overflow flaws can be present in both the web server and application server products that serve the static and dynamic portions of a site, or in the web application itself. Buffer overflows found in commonly-used server products are likely to become widely known and can pose a significant risk to users of these products. When web applications use libraries, such as a graphics library to generate images or a communications library

to send e-mail, they open themselves to potential buffer overflow attacks. Literature detailing buffer overflow attacks against commonly-used products is readily available, and newly discovered vulnerabilities are reported almost daily. Buffer overflows can also be found in custom web application code, and may even be more likely, given the lack of scrutiny that web applications typically go through. Buffer overflow attacks against customized web applications can sometimes lead to interesting results. In some cases, we have discovered that sending large inputs can cause the web application or the back-end database to malfunction. It is possible to cause a denial of service attack against the web site, depending on the severity and specific nature of the flaw. Overly large inputs could cause the application to display a detailed error message, potentially leading to a successful attack on the system. Buffer overflow attacks generally rely upon two techniques (and usually the combination):

Writing data to particular memory addresses Having the operating system mishandle data types This means that strongly-typed programming languages (and environments) that disallow direct memory access usually prevent buffer overflows from happening.

Language/Environment Java, Java Virtual Machine (JVM) .NET Perl Python - interpreted Ruby C/C++ Assembly COBOL Both Both Both

Compiled or Interpreted

Strongly Typed Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes No No No No No

Direct Memory Access

Safe or Unsafe Safe Safe Safe Safe Safe Unsafe Unsafe Safe

Intepreted Interpreted Compiled Compiled Compiled

Yes Yes No

Table 8.1: Language descriptions

General Prevention Techniques

A number of general techniques to prevent buffer overflows include:

Code auditing (automated or manual) Developer training bounds checking, use of unsafe functions, and group standards

Non-executable stacks many operating systems have at least some support for this Compiler tools StackShield, StackGuard, and Libsafe, among others Safe functions use strncat instead of strcat, strncpy instead of strcpy, etc Patches Be sure to keep your web and application servers fully patched, and be aware of bug reports relating to applications upon which your code is dependent.

Periodically scan your application with one or more of the commonly available scanners that look for buffer overflow flaws in your server products and your custom web applications.

Stack Overflow
Stack overflows are the best understood and the most common form of buffer overflows. The basics of a stack overflow is simple:

There are two buffers, a source buffer containing arbitrary input (presumably from the attacker), and a destination buffer that is too small for the attack input. The second buffer resides on the stack and somewhat adjacent to the function return address on the stack.

The faulty code does not check that the source buffer is too large to fit in the destination buffer. It copies the attack input to the destination buffer, overwriting additional information on the stack (such as the function return address).

When the function returns, the CPU unwinds the stack frame and pops the (now modified) return address from the stack.

Control does not return to the function as it should. Instead, arbitrary code (chosen by the attacker when crafting the initial input) is executed.

The following example, written in C, demonstrates a stack overflow exploit.

#include <string.h> void f(char* s) { char buffer[10]; strcpy(buffer, s); }

void main(void) { f("01234567890123456789"); } [root /tmp]# ./stacktest Segmentation fault

How to determine if you are vulnerable

If your program:

is written in a language (or depends upon a program that is written in a language) that allows buffer overflows to be created (see Table 8.1) AND

copies data from one buffer on the stack to another without checking sizes first AND does not use techniques such as canary values or non-executable stacks to prevent buffer overflows THEN

it is likely that the application is vulnerable to attack.

How to protect yourself

1. Deploy on systems capable of using non-executable stacks, such as: 1. AMD and Intel x86-64 chips with associated 64-bit operating systems 2. Windows XP SP2 (both 32- and 64-bit) 3. Windows 2003 SP1 (both 32- and 64-bit) 4. Linux after 2.6.8 on AMD and x86-64 processors in 32- and 64-bit mode 5. OpenBSD (w^x on Intel, AMD, SPARC, Alpha and PowerPC) 6. Solaris 2.6 and later with the noexec_user_stack flag enabled 2. Use higher-level programming languages that are strongly typed and that disallow direct memory access. 3. Validate input to prevent unexpected data from being processed, such as being too long, of the wrong data type, containing "junk" characters, etc. 4. If relying upon operating system functions or utilities written in a vulnerable language, ensure that they: 1. use the principle of least privilege 2. use compilers that protect against stack and heap overflows

3. are current in terms of patches

Heap Overflow
Heap overflows are problematic in that they are not necessarily protected by CPUs capable of using nonexecutable stacks. A heap is an area of memory allocated by the application at run-time to store data. The following example, written in C, shows a heap overflow exploit.

#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <string.h> #define BSIZE 16 #define OVERSIZE 8 /* overflow buf2 by OVERSIZE bytes */ void main(void) { u_long b_diff; char *buf0 = (char*)malloc(BSIZE); char *buf1 = (char*)malloc(BSIZE); b_diff = (u_long)buf1 - (u_long)buf0; printf("Initial values: "); // difference between locations // create two buffers

printf("buf0=%p, buf1=%p, b_diff=0x%x bytes\n", buf0, buf1, b_diff); memset(buf1, 'A', BUFSIZE-1), buf1[BUFSIZE-1] = '\0'; printf("Before overflow: buf1=%s\n", buf1); memset(buf0, 'B', (u_int)(diff + OVERSIZE)); printf("After overflow: } [root /tmp]# ./heaptest Initial values: After overflow: buf0=0x9322008, buf1=0x9322020, diff=0xff0 bytes buf1=BBBBBBBBAAAAAAA buf1=%s\n", buf1);

Before overflow: buf1=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

The simple program above shows two buffers being allocated on the heap, with the first buffer being overflowed to overwrite the contents of the second buffer.

How to determine if you are vulnerable

If your program:

is written in a language (or depends upon a program that is written in a language) that allows buffer overflows to be created (see Table 8.1) AND

copies data from one buffer on the stack to another without checking sizes first AND does not use techniques such as canary values to prevent buffer overflows THEN

it is likely that the application is vulnerable to attack.

How to protect yourself

1. Use higher-level programming languages that are strongly typed and that disallow direct memory access. 2. Validate input to prevent unexpected data from being processed, such as being too long, of the wrong data type, containing "junk" characters, etc. 3. If relying upon operating system functions or utilities written in a vulnerable language, ensure that they: 1. use the principle of least privilege 2. use compilers that protect against stack and heap overflows 3. are current in terms of patches

Format String
Format string buffer overflows (usually called "format string vulnerabilities") are highly specialized buffer overflows that can have the same effects as other buffer overflow attacks. Basically, format string vulnerabilities take advantage of the mixture of data and control information in certain functions, such as C/C++'s printf. The easiest way to understand this class of vulnerability is with an example:

#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <string.h> void main(void) { char str[100] = scanf("%s"); printf("%s", str); }

This simple program takes input from the user and displays it back on the screen. The string %s means that the other parameter, str, should be displayed as a string. This example is not vulnerable to a format string attack, but if one changes the last line, it becomes exploitable:

printf(str);

To see how, consider the user entering the special input: %08x.%08x.%08x.%08x.%08x By constructing input as such, the program can be exploited to print the first five entries from the stack.

How to determine if you are vulnerable

If your program:

uses functions such as printf, snprintf directly, or indirectly through system services (such as syslog) or other AND

the use of such functions allows input from the user to contain control information interpreted by the function itself

it is highly likely that the application is vulnerable to attack.

How to protect yourself

1. Use higher-level programming languages that are strongly typed and that disallow direct memory access. 2. Validate input to prevent unexpected data from being processed, such as being too long, of the wrong data type, containing "junk" characters, etc. Specifically check for control information (meta-characters like '%') 3. Avoid the use of functions like printf that allow user input to contain control information 4. If relying upon operating system functions or utilities written in a vulnerable language, ensure that they: 1. use the principle of least privilege 2. use compilers that protect against stack and heap overflows 3. are current in terms of patches

Unicode Overflow

Unicode exploits are a bit more difficult to do than typical buffer overflows as demonstrated in Anleys 2002 paper, but it is wrong to assume that by using Unicode, you are protected against buffer overflows. Examples of Unicode overflows include Code Red, a devastating Trojan with an estimated economic cost in the billions of dollars.

How to determine if you are vulnerable

If your program:

is written in a language (or depends upon a program that is written in a language) that allows buffer overflows to be created (see Table 8.1) AND

takes Unicode input from a user AND fails to sanitize the input AND does not use techniques such as canary values to prevent buffer overflows THEN

it is highly likely that the application is vulnerable to attack.

How to protect yourself

1. Deploy on systems capable of using non-executable stacks, such as: 1. AMD and Intel x86-64 chips with associated 64-bit operating systems 2. Windows XP SP2 (both 32- and 64-bit) 3. Windows 2003 SP1 (both 32- and 64-bit) 4. Linux after 2.6.8 on AMD and x86-64 processors in 32- and 64-bit mode 5. OpenBSD (w^x on Intel, AMD, SPARC, Alpha and PowerPC) 6. Solaris 2.6 and later with the noexec_user_stack flag enabled 2. Use higher-level programming languages that are strongly typed and that disallow direct memory access. 3. Validate input to prevent unexpected data from being processed, such as being too long, of the wrong data type, containing "junk" characters, etc. 4. If relying upon operating system functions or utilities written in a vulnerable language, ensure that they: 1. use the principle of least privilege 2. use compilers that protect against stack and heap overflows 3. are current in terms of patches

Integer Overflow

When an application takes two numbers of fixed word size and perform an operation with them, the result may not fit within the same word size. For example, if the two 8-bit numbers 192 and 208 are added together and stored into another 8-bit byte, the result will not fit into an 8-bit result: 1100 0000 + 1101 0000 = 0001 1001 0000 Although such an operation will usually cause some type of exception, your application must be coded to check for such an exception and take proper action. Otherwise, your application would report that 192 + 208 equals 144. The following code demonstrates a buffer overflow, and was adapted from Blexim's Phrack article:

#include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> void main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int i = atoi(argv[1]); unsigned short s = i; char buf[50]; if (s > 10) { return; } memcpy(buf, argv[2], i); buf[i] = '\0'; printf("%s\n", buf); return; } [root /tmp]# ./inttest 65580 foobar Segmentation fault // copy i bytes to the buffer // add a null byte to the buffer // output the buffer contents // input from user // truncate to a short // large buffer // check we're not greater than 10

The above code is exploitable because the validation does not occur on the input value (65580), but rather the value after it has been converted to an unsigned short (45).

Integer overflows can be a problem in any language and can be exploited when integers are used in array indices and implicit short math operations.

How to determine if you are vulnerable

Examine use of signed integers, bytes, and shorts. Are there cases where these values are used as array indices after performing an arithmetic operation (+, -, *, /, or % (modulo))?

How would your program react to a negative or zero value for integer values, particular during array lookups?

How to protect yourself

If using .NET, use David LeBlancs SafeInt class or a similar construct. Otherwise, use a "BigInteger" or "BigDecimal" implementation in cases where it would be hard to validate input yourself.

If your compiler supports the option, change the default for integers to be unsigned unless otherwise explicitly stated. Use unsigned integers whenever you don't need negative values.

Use range checking if your language or framework supports it, or be sure to implement range checking yourself after all arithmetic operations.

Be sure to check for exceptions if your language supports it.

Further reading

Team Teso, Exploiting Format String Vulnerabilities

http://crypto.stanford.edu/cs155/papers/formatstring-1.2.pdf

Newsham, Tim, Format String Attacks

http://hackerproof.org/technotes/format/FormatString.pdf

w00 w00 and Matt Conover, Preliminary Heap Overflow Tutorial

http://www.w00w00.org/files/articles/heaptut.txt

Chris Anley, Creating Arbitrary Shellcode In Unicode Expanded Strings

http://www.ngssoftware.com/papers/unicodebo.pdf

David Leblanc, Integer Handling with the C++ SafeInt Class

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dncode/html/secure01142004.asp

Aleph One, Smashing the Stack for fun and profit

http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=49&id=14#article

Mark Donaldson, Inside the buffer Overflow Attack: Mechanism, method, & prevention

http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/securecode/buffer-overflow-attack-mechanism-methodprevention_386

NX Bit, Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit

Horizon, How to bypass Solaris no execute stack protection

http://www.secinf.net/unix_security/How_to_bypass_Solaris_nonexecutable_stack_protection_.html

Alexander Anisimov, Defeating Microsoft Windows XP SP2 Heap protection and DEP bypass , Positive Technologies

http://www.ptsecurity.com/download/defeating-xpsp2-heap-protection.pdf

Matt Conover, w00w00 on Heap Overflows, w00w00 Security Team

http://www.w00w00.org/files/articles/heaptut.txt

Blexim, Basic Integer Overflows

http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=60&id=10#article

StackShield

http://www.angelfire.com/sk/stackshield/index.html

StackGuard

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GNU_C_Compiler_Internals/Stackguard_4_1 http://static.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sec98/full_papers/cowan/cowan_html/cowan.html

Libsafe

http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Libsafe

Development Guide Table of Contents