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SLUBStick Artifacts

This repo contains artifacts developed during a research project, as well as the code to perform SLUBStick. For convenience, we provide a Virtual Machine (VM) image with all the necessary programs and scripts included.

What is SLUBStick

SLUBStick is a kernel exploitation technique that elevates a heap vulnerability to an arbitrary memory read/write primitive and works in several steps: Initially, it exploits a timing side channel of the allocator to reliably perform a cross-cache attack with better than 99% success rate on commonly used generic caches. SLUBStick then exploits code patterns prevalent in the Linux kernel to perform a cross-cache attack and turn a heap vulnerability into a page table manipulation, thereby granting the capability to read and write memory arbitrarily.

The artifacts demonstrate the timing side channel and end-to-end exploits. For both, we provide an environment of a VM running Linux kernel x86_64 v6.2. For the timing side channel, the evaluation presents success rates for slab pages. For the end-to-end exploits, our attacks exploits an artificial Double Free (DF) vulnerability to obtain an arbitrary physical read and write primitive. This primitive is then used to manipulate the /etc/passwd file to gain root privileges within the VM.

Dependencies

A Linux system running on the x86_64 architecture as well as that allows to run qemu with KVM enabled.

Install

To install SLUBStick, run the following command:

git clone https://github.com/IAIK/SLUBStick.git
cd SLUBStick
# download ubuntu22.04.qcow2 from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11943102 and store in images
make run

The VM image is the default Ubuntu 22.04 image running the Linux kernel v6.2. The username to log in is lmaar, and the password is asdf. This user is in the sudo group and, thereby, can gain root privileges via sudo su.

Set-up

• Execute make run boots the VM, providing a terminal login prompt and an already logged in user on a graphical interface, i.e., Gnome.
• Either login in the terminal (with username lmaar and password asdf) or open a terminal in the graphical interface.
• Execute uname -r should return 6.2.0-x-generic.
• The directory /home/lmaar/exploits should include helper.c, do\_eval*.sh, and eval.py.
• The directory /home/lmaar/exploits/userspace should include *.c.
• Change directory to /home/lmaar/exploits and execute make init.

Changes

If you want to adjust files within the VM:

• Execute make server 2&> /dev/null& on the host.
• Execute make run.
• Change directory to /home/lmaar/exploits and execute make sync and then make init.

Experiments

In the following, we demonstrate experiments of the timing side channel and exploit using SLUBStick:

Basic leakage 1 exploit

How to: Execute ./userspace/timed_ppdev_alloc.elf.

Results: This experiment outputs a vertical plot with the following format: <index>: <tsc>:###, where index is the allocated object's index, tsc the required time of the allocation, and ### provides a visual representation of the tsc. Allocating a new slab will result in a significantly larger tsc compared to that from the CPU free list. Since one slab (from the kmalloc-192) can include 21 objects (observed via cat /sys/kernel/slab/kmalloc-192/objs_per_slab), a new slab will be allocated every 21th allocation. This is seen with the significantly larger tsc (i.e., above 2000 compared to about 1100) of every 21th index.

basic_leakage_1.webm

Basic leakage 2 exploit

How to: Execute ./userspace/timed_anon_vma_name_alloc.elf <cache_size>.

Cache sizes: 16, 32, 64, or 96 Bytes.

Results: Similar to the experiment above, this experiment indicates larger tsc values when the SLUB allocator allocates a new slab. Depending on the cache_size (i.e., between 16 to 96 Bytes), the new slab is allocated within the kmalloc-[16,96]. For larger cache_sizes, fewer objects must be allocated to prompt the allocator to allocate a new slab because fewer objects are located on one slab. For instance, the kmalloc-96 generic cache stores 42 objects, indicated with significantly larger tsc values for every 42th allocation.

basic_leakage_2.webm

Single page slab reclaiming exploit

How to: Execute ./userspace/eval_pud.elf <cache_size>.

Cache sizes: 8, 16, 32, 64, 96, 128, 192, or 256 Bytes.

Results: This experiment outputs which slab page was reclaimed as a Page Upper Directory (PUD), successfully performing the cross-cache attack from the kernel heap to a PUD. If the correct slab page is reclaimed as a PUD, this experiment outputs [+] SUCCESS, while [!] FAIL indicates a failed experiment. [!] RETRY (start not found) indicates that the side channel did not find suitable slabs for cross-cache reuse. This output represents neither a failure nor a success, but the experiment should be retried.

single_page_slab_reclaiming.webm

Persistent code pattern 1 exploit

How to: Execute ./userspace/exploit_signal.elf.

Results: Tampers with the /etc/passwd that unprivileged users can elevate their privilege level by calling su without authentication.

persistent_code_pattern_1_exploit.webm

Persistent code pattern 2 exploit

How to: Execute ./userspace/exploit_snd.elf <cache_size>.

Cache sizes: 16, 32, 64, 96, 128, 192, or 256 Bytes.

Results: Same results as above.

persistent_code_pattern_2_exploit.webm

Temporal code pattern exploit

How to: Execute ./userspace/exploit_key.elf <cache_size>

Cache sizes: 16, 64, 96, or 128 Bytes.

Results: Same results as above.

temporal_code_pattern_exploit.webm

Publication

@inproceedings{Maar2024SLUBStick,
 author = {Lukas Maar and Stefan Gast and Martin Unterguggenberger and Mathias Oberhuber and Stefan Mangard},
 booktitle = {{USENIX Security}},
 title = {{SLUBStick: Arbitrary Memory Writes through Practical Software Cross-Cache Attacks within the Linux Kernel}},
 year = {2024}
}