16th Apr 2003 [SBWID-6155]
COMMAND
Snort TCP Stream Reassembly Integer Overflow Vulnerability
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
Snort 2.0 versions prior to RC1
Snort 1.9.x
Snort 1.8.x
IDSes and other security appliances using snort technology embedded.
PROBLEM
In Core Security Technologies Advisory CORE-2003-0307
[http://www.coresecurity.com]:
*Vulnerability Description*
Snort is a very popular open source network intrusion detection system.
It can detect hundreds of different attacks by analyzing packets
received on the network and applying a database of pattern matching
rules. Snort also comes with modules and plugins that perform a variety
of functions such as protocol analysis, output, and logging. For more
information about Snort visit http:///www.snort.org
The stream4 preprocessor module is a Snort plugin that reassembles TCP
traffic before passing it on to be analyzed. It also detects several
types of IDS evasion attacks.
We have discovered an exploitable heap overflow in this module
resulting from sequence number calculations that overflow a 32 bit
integer variable.
To exploit this vulnerability an attacker does not need to know on
which host the Snort sensor is running. It is only necessary to guess
where to send traffic that the Snort sensor will 'see' and analyze.
Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to execution
of arbitrary commands on a system running the Snort sensor with the
privileges of the user running the snort process (usually root), a
denial of service attack against the snort sensor and possibly the
implementation of IDS evasion techniques that would prevent the sensor
from detecting attacks on the monitored network.
*Credits:*
This vulnerability was discovered by Bruce Leidl, Juan Pablo Martinez
Kuhn and Alejandro David Weil from Core Security Technologies during
Bugweek 2003 (March 3-7, 2003).
We would like to thank Marty Roesch from Sourcefire Inc. for addressing
this issue and fixing the problem in Snort.
*Technical Description - Exploit/Concept Code:*
The vulnerability can be demonstrated by sending some specially crafted
packets with the free command line packet creating utility called hping
which you can download from http://www.hping.org.
In the following example 192.168.22.6 and 192.168.22.2 are both hosts
that actually exist and are on a network monitored by the Snort sensor.
Two packets are sent from 192.168.22.2 to port 111 on host 192.168.22.6
and then one packet is sent back to host 192.168.22.2 from
192.168.22.6.
hping 192.168.22.2 -a 192.168.22.6 -s 3339 -p 111 --ack --rst -c 1 -d 0x1 \\
--setseq 0xffff0023 --setack 0xc0c4c014
hping 192.168.22.2 -a 192.168.22.6 -s 3339 -p 111 --ack --rst -c 1 -d 0xF00 \\
--setseq 0xffffffff --setack 0xc0c4c014
hping 192.168.22.6 -a 192.168.22.2 -s 111 -p 3339 --ack -c 1 -d 0 \\
--setseq 0xc0c4c014 --setack 0xffffffff
The first packet sets up a new Session structure in the stream4 module
and the important detail is that the base_seq in the client Stream is
set to 0xffff0023.
The second packet sends 3840 bytes of data in a large fragmented IP
datagram. This adds a packet with the sequence number 0xffffffff to the
tree of stream data to be reassembled.
The last packet sets the last_ack of the client stream to 0xffffffff
and since the difference between the base_seq and the last_ack of the
client stream is very large it is flushed for analysis.
When the stream is reassembled and the second large packet is added,
the stream is set up with these values in TraverseFunc() in
spp_stream4.c.
s->base_seq = 0xffff0023
s->next_seq = 0xffff0024
s->last_ack = 0xffffffff
The packet itself has these values
spd->seq_num = 0xffffffff
spd->payload_size = 0xf00
The first sanity check makes sure that the packet sequence number is
between the base_seq and last_ack values for the stream
spp_stream4.c:Traversefunc()
if(spd->seq_num < s->base_seq || spd->seq_num > s->last_ack)
This condition must evaluate to FALSE or the function returns.
Then there is a check that is supposed to detect conditions that would
overflow the buffer so that later code can handle it by truncating the
data.
The packet sequence number must be greater than both the base_seq and
next_seq for the stream
spd->seq_num >= s->base_seq &&
spd->seq_num >= s->next_seq &&
This condition is supposed to detect a packet that will overflow the
buffer (since the difference between base_seq and last_ack has already
been verified to be smaller than the buffer size). However, if
(spd->seq_num + spd->payload_size) overflows a 32 bit integer value the
expression evaluates to a small integer and the condition is passed.
(spd->seq_num + spd->payload_size) <= s->last_ack
Then the offset in the buffer to copy the packet to is calculated. With
our values, this becomes 0xffdc which is near to the end of buffer.
offset = spd->seq_num - s->base_seq (offset = 0xffdc)
This memcpy() copies spd->payload_size (0xf00) bytes of data starting
at buf + offset (near the end of the buffer) overflowing into the heap.
memcpy(buf + offset, spd->payload, spd->payload_size)
On our Linux build of Snort 1.9.0 this overflow conveniently overwrites
a function pointer that is called immediately after the reassembly
preprocessor returns:
80 while(idx != NULL)
(gdb)
82 assert(idx->func != NULL);
(gdb)
83 idx->func(p);
(gdb)
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x58585858 in ?? ()
We have successfully exploited this vulnerability and produced an
exploit that functions on several different binaries of Snort 1.9.0 and
1.9.1. It is available as a module for our penetration testing product
Core Impact.
SOLUTION
*Solution/Vendor Information/Workaround:*
Snort 2.0 released on April 14th, is available and includes fixes to
the vulnerability reported in this advisory.
The source code package for Snort 2.0 can be obtained from
http://www.snort.org/dl/snort-2.0.0.tar.gz
Binaries can be obtained from
http://www.snort.org/dl/binaries
A workaround for this bug is to disable the TCP stream reassembly
module. This can be done by commenting out the following line from your
Snort configuration file (usually 'snort.conf') and sending a SIGHUP
signal to the running Snort process:
preprocessor stream4_reassemble
Although this will prevent the vulnerability from being exploited it
will make it possible to easily evade the IDS by fragmenting attacks
across multiple TCP segments.
*DISCLAIMER:*
The contents of this advisory are copyright (c) 2003 CORE Security
Technologies and may be distributed freely provided that no fee is
charged for this distribution and proper credit is given.