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<!-- Brandon Azad -->

Blanket is a sandbox escape targeting iOS 11.2.6, although the main vulnerability was only patched in iOS 11.4.1. It exploits a Mach port replacement vulnerability in launchd (CVE-2018-4280), as well as several smaller vulnerabilities in other services, to execute code inside the ReportCrash process, which is unsandboxed, runs as root, and has the task_for_pid-allow entitlement. This grants blanket control over every process running on the phone, including security-critical ones like amfid.

The exploit consists of several stages. This README will explain the main vulnerability and the stages of the sandbox escape step-by-step.

Impersonating system services

While researching crash reporting on iOS, I discovered a Mach port replacement vulnerability in launchd. By crashing in a particular way, a process can make the kernel send a Mach message to launchd that causes launchd to over-deallocate a send right to a Mach port in its IPC namespace. This allows an attacker to impersonate any launchd service it can look up to the rest of the system, which opens up numerous avenues to privilege escalation.

This vulnerability is also present on macOS, but triggering the vulnerability on iOS is more difficult due to checks in launchd that ensure that the Mach exception message comes from the kernel.

CVE-2018-4280: launchd Mach port over-deallocation while handling EXC_CRASH exception messages

Launchd multiplexes multiple different Mach message handlers over its main port, including a MIG handler for exception messages. If a process sends a mach_exception_raise or mach_exception_raise_state_identity message to its own bootstrap port, launchd will receive and process that message as a host-level exception.

Unfortunately, launchd's handling of these messages is buggy. If the exception type is EXC_CRASH, then launchd will deallocate the thread and task ports sent in the message and then return KERN_FAILURE from the service routine, causing the MIG system to deallocate the thread and task ports again. (The assumption is that if a service routine returns success, then it has taken ownership of all resources in the Mach message, while if the service routine returns an error, then it has taken ownership of none of the resources.)

Here is the code from launchd's service routine for mach_exception_raise messages, decompiled using IDA/Hex-Rays and lightly edited for readability:

kern_return_t __fastcall
catch_mach_exception_raise(                             // (a) The service routine is
        mach_port_t            exception_port,          //     called with values directly
        mach_port_t            thread,                  //     from the Mach message
        mach_port_t            task,                    //     sent by the client. The
        exception_type_t       exception,               //     thread and task ports could
        mach_exception_data_t  code,                    //     be arbitrary send rights.
        mach_msg_type_number_t codeCnt)
{
    __int64 __stack_guard;                 // ST28_8@1
    kern_return_t kr;                      // w0@1 MAPDST
    kern_return_t result;                  // w0@4
    __int64 codes_left;                    // x25@6
    mach_exception_data_type_t code_value; // t1@7
    int pid;                               // [xsp+34h] [xbp-44Ch]@1
    char codes_str[1024];                  // [xsp+38h] [xbp-448h]@7

    __stack_guard = *__stack_chk_guard_ptr;
    pid = -1;
    kr = pid_for_task(task, &pid);
    if ( kr )
    {
        _os_assumes_log(kr);
        _os_avoid_tail_call();
    }
    if ( current_audit_token.val[5] )                   // (b) If the message was sent by
    {                                                   //     a process with a nonzero PID
        result = KERN_FAILURE;                          //     (any non-kernel process),
    }                                                   //     the message is rejected.
    else
    {
        if ( codeCnt )
        {
            codes_left = codeCnt;
            do
            {
                code_value = *code;
                ++code;
                __snprintf_chk(codes_str, 0x400uLL, 0, 0x400uLL, "0x%llx", code_value);
                --codes_left;
            }
            while ( codes_left );
        }
        launchd_log_2(
            0LL,
            3LL,
            "Host-level exception raised: pid = %d, thread = 0x%x, "
                "exception type = 0x%x, codes = { %s }",
            pid,
            thread,
            exception,
            codes_str);
        kr = deallocate_port(thread);                   // (c) The "thread" port sent in
        if ( kr )                                       //     the message is deallocated.
        {
            _os_assumes_log(kr);
            _os_avoid_tail_call();
        }
        kr = deallocate_port(task);                     // (d) The "task" port sent in the
        if ( kr )                                       //     message is deallocated.
        {
            _os_assumes_log(kr);
            _os_avoid_tail_call();
        }
        if ( exception == EXC_CRASH )                   // (e) If the exception type is
            result = KERN_FAILURE;                      //     EXC_CRASH, then KERN_FAILURE
        else                                            //     is returned. MIG will
            result = 0;                                 //     deallocate the ports again.
    }
    *__stack_chk_guard_ptr;
    return result;
}

This is what the code does:

  1. This function is the Mach service routine for mach_exception_raise exception messages: it gets invoked directly by the Mach system when launchd processes a mach_exception_raise Mach exception message. The arguments to the service routine are parsed from the Mach message, and hence are controlled by the message's sender.
  2. At (b), launchd checks that the Mach exception message was sent by the kernel. The sender's audit token contains the PID of the sending process in field 5, which will only be zero for the kernel. If the message wasn't sent by the kernel, it is rejected.
  3. The thread and task ports from the message are explicitly deallocated at (c) and (d).
  4. At (e), launchd checks whether the exception type is EXC_CRASH, and returns KERN_FAILURE if so. The intent is to make sure not to handle EXC_CRASH messages, presumably so that ReportCrash is invoked as the corpse handler. However, returning KERN_FAILURE at this point will cause the task and thread ports to be deallocated again when the exception message is cleaned up later. This means those two ports will be over-deallocated.

In order for this vulnerability to be useful, we will want to free launchd's send right to a Mach service it vends, so that we can then impersonate that service to the rest of the system. This means that we'll need the task and thread ports in the exception message to really be send rights to the Mach service port we want to free in launchd. Then, once we've sent launchd the malicious exception message and freed the service port, we will try to get that same port name reused, but this time for a Mach port to which we hold the receive right. That way, when a client asks launchd to give them a send right to the Mach port for the service, launchd will instead give them a send right to our port, letting us impersonate that service to the client. After that, there are many different routes to gain system privileges.

Triggering the vulnerability

In order to actually trigger the vulnerability, we'll need to bypass the check that the message was sent by the kernel. This is because if we send the exception message to launchd directly it will just be discarded. Somehow, we need to get the kernel to send a "malicious" exception message containing a Mach send right for a system service instead of the real thread and task ports.

As it turns out, there is a Mach trap, task_set_special_port, that can be used to set a custom send right to be used in place of the true task port in certain situations. One of these situations is when the kernel generates an exception message on behalf of a task: instead of placing the true task send right in the exception message, the kernel will use the send right supplied by task_set_special_port. More specifically, if a task calls task_set_special_port to set a custom value for its TASK_KERNEL_PORT special port and then the task crashes, the exception message generated by the kernel will have a send right to the custom port, not the true task port, in the "task" field. An equivalent API, thread_set_special_port, can be used to set a custom port in the "thread" field of the generated exception message.

Because of this behavior, it's actually not difficult at all to make the kernel generate a "malicious" exception message containing a Mach service port in place of the task and thread port. However, we still need to ensure that the exception message that we generate gets delivered to launchd.

Once again, making sure the kernel delivers the "malicious" exception message to launchd isn't difficult if you know the right API. The function thread_set_exception_ports will set any Mach send right as the port to which exception messages on this thread are delivered. Thus, all we need to do is invoke thread_set_exception_ports with the bootstrap port, and then any exception we generate will cause the kernel to send an exception message to launchd.

The last piece of the puzzle is getting the right exception type. The vulnerability will only be triggered for EXC_CRASH exceptions. A little trial and error reveals that we can easily generate EXC_CRASH exceptions by calling the standard abort function.

Thus, in summary, we can use existing and well-documented APIs to make the kernel generate a malicious EXC_CRASH exception message on our behalf and deliver it to launchd, triggering the vulnerability and freeing the Mach service port:

  1. Use thread_set_exception_ports to set launchd as the exception handler for this thread.
  2. Call bootstrap_look_up to get the service port for the service we want to impersonate from launchd.
  3. Call task_set_special_port/thread_set_special_port to use that service port instead of the true task and thread ports in exception messages.
  4. Call abort. The kernel will send an EXC_CRASH exception message to launchd, but the task and thread ports in the message will be the target service port.
  5. Launchd will process the exception message and free the service port.

Running code after the crash

There's a problem with the above strategy: calling abort will kill our process. If we want to be able to run any code at all after triggering the vulnerability, we need a way to perform the crash in another process.

(With other exception types a process could actually recover from the exception. The way a process would recover is to set its thread exception handler to be launchd and its task exception handler to be itself. After launchd processes and fails to handle the exception, the kernel would send the exception to the task handler, which would reset the thread state and inform the kernel that the exception has been handled. However, a process cannot catch its own EXC_CRASH exceptions, so we do need two processes.)

One strategy is to first exploit a vulnerability in another process on iOS and force that process to set its kernel ports and crash. However, for a proof-of-concept, it's easier to create an app extension.

App extensions, introduced in iOS 8, provide a way to package some functionality of an application so it is available outside of the application. The code of an app extension runs in a separate, sandboxed process. This makes it very easy to launch a process that will set its special ports, register launchd as its exception handler for EXC_CRASH, and then call abort.

There is no supported way for an app to programatically launch its own app extension and talk to it. However, Ian McDowell wrote a great article describing how to use the private NSExtension API to launch and communicate with an app extension process. I've used an almost identical strategy here. The only difference is that we need to communicate a Mach port to the app extension process, which involves registering a dummy service with launchd to which the app extension connects.

Preventing port reuse in launchd

One challenge you would notice if you ran the exploit as described is that occasionally you would not be able to reacquire the freed port. The reason for this is that the kernel tracks a process's free IPC entries in a freelist, and so a just-freed port name will be reused (with a different generation number) when a new port is allocated in the IPC table. Thus, we will only reallocate the port name we want if launchd doesn't reuse that IPC entry slot for another port first.

The way around this is to bury the free IPC entry slot down the freelist, so that if launchd allocates new ports those other slots will be used first. How do we do this? We can register a bunch of dummy Mach services in launchd with ports to which we hold the receive right. When we call abort, the exception handler will fire first, and then the process state, including the Mach ports, will be cleaned up. When launchd receives the EXC_CRASH exception it will inadvertently free the target service port, placing the IPC entry slot corresponding to that port name at the head of the freelist. Then, when the rest of our app extension's Mach ports are destroyed, launchd will receive notifications and free the dummy service ports, burying the target IPC entry slot behind the slots for the just-freed ports. Thus, as long as launchd allocates fewer ports than the number of dummy services we registered, the target slot will still be on the freelist, meaning we can still cause launchd to reallocate the slot with the same port name as the original service.

The limitation of this strategy is that we need the com.apple.security.application-groups entitlement in order to register services with launchd. There are other ways to stash Mach ports in launchd, but using application groups is certainly the easiest, and suffices for this proof-of-concept.

Impersonating the freed service

Once we have spawned the crasher app extension and freed a Mach send right in launchd, we need to reallocate that Mach port name with a send right to which we hold the receive right. That way, any messages launchd sends to that port name will be received by us, and any time launchd shares that port name with a client, the client will receive a send right to our port. In particular, if we can free launchd's send right to a Mach service, then any process that requests that service from launchd will receive a send right to our own port instead of the real service port. This allows us to impersonate the service or perform a man-in-the-middle attack, inspecting all messages that the client sends to the service.

Getting the freed port name reused so that it refers to a port we own is also quite simple, given that we've already decided to use the application-groups entitlement: just register dummy Mach services with launchd until one of them reuses the original port name. We'll need to do it in batches, registering a large number of dummy services together, checking to see if any has successfully reused the freed port name, and then deregistering them. The reason is that we need to be sure that our registrations go all the way back in the IPC port freelist to recover the buried port name we want.

We can check whether we've managed to successfully reuse the freed port name by looking up the original service with bootstrap_look_up: if it returns one of our registered service ports, we're done.

Once we've managed to register a new service that gets the same port name as the original, any clients that look up the original service in launchd will be given a send right to our port, not the real service port. Thus, we are effectively impersonating the original service to the rest of the system (or at least, to those processes that look up the service after our attack).

Stage 1: Obtaining the host-priv port

Once we have the capability to impersonate arbitrary system services, the next step is to obtain the host-priv port. This step is straightforward, and is not affected by the changes in iOS 11.3. The high-level idea of this attack is to impersonate SafetyNet, crash ReportCrash, and then retrieve the host-priv port from the dying ReportCrash task port sent in the exception message.

About ReportCrash and SafetyNet

ReportCrash is responsible for generating crash reports on iOS. This one binary actually vends 4 different services (each in a different process, although not all may be running at any given time):

  1. com.apple.ReportCrash is responsible for generating crash reports for crashing processes. It is the host-level exception handler for EXC_CRASH, EXC_GUARD, and EXC_RESOURCE exceptions.
  2. com.apple.ReportCrash.Jetsam handles Jetsam reports.
  3. com.apple.ReportCrash.SimulateCrash creates reports for simulated crashes.
  4. com.apple.ReportCrash.SafetyNet is the registered exception handler for the com.apple.ReportCrash service.

The ones of interest to us are com.apple.ReportCrash and com.apple.ReportCrash.SafetyNet, hereafter referred to simply as ReportCrash and SafetyNet. Both of these are MIG-based services, and they run effectively the same code.

When ReportCrash starts up, it looks up the SafetyNet service in launchd and sets the returned port as the task-level exception handler. The intent seems to be that if ReportCrash itself were to crash, a separate process would generate the crash report for it. However, this code path looks defunct: ReportCrash registers SafetyNet for mach_exception_raise messages, even though both ReportCrash and SafetyNet only handle mach_exception_raise_state_identity messages. Nonetheless, both services are still present and reachable from within the iOS container sandbox.

ReportCrash manipulation primitives

In order to carry out the following attack, we need to be able to manipulate ReportCrash (or SafetyNet) to behave in the way we want. Specifically, we need the following capabilities: start ReportCrash on demand, force ReportCrash to exit, crash ReportCrash, and make sure that ReportCrash doesn't exit while we're using it. Here I'll describe how we achieve each objective.

In order to start ReportCrash, we simply need to send it a Mach message: launchd will start it on demand. However, due to its peculiar design, any message type except mach_exception_raise_state_identity will cause ReportCrash to stop responding to new messages and eventually exit. Thus, we need to send a mach_exception_raise_state_identity message if we want it to stay alive afterwards.

In order to exit ReportCrash, we can simply send it any other type of Mach message.

There are many ways to crash ReportCrash. The easiest is probably to send a mach_exception_raise_state_identity message with the thread port set to MACH_PORT_NULL.

Finally, we need to ensure that ReportCrash does not exit while we're using it. Each mach_exception_raise_state_identity message that it processes causes it to spin off another thread to listen for the next message while the original thread generates the crash report. ReportCrash will exit once all of the outstanding threads generating a crash report have finished. Thus, if we can stall one of those threads while it is in the process of generating a crash report, we can keep it from ever exiting.

The easiest way I found to do that was to send a mach_exception_raise_state_identity message with a custom port in the task and thread fields. Once ReportCrash tries to generate a crash report, it will call task_policy_get on the "task" port, which will cause it to send a Mach message to the port that we sent and await a reply. But since the "task" port is just a regular old Mach port, we can simply not reply to the Mach message, and ReportCrash will wait indefinitely for task_policy_get to return.

Extracting host-priv from ReportCrash

For the first stage of the exploit, the attack plan is relatively straightforward:

  1. Start the SafetyNet service and force it to stay alive for the duration of our attack.
  2. Use the launchd service impersonation primitive to impersonate SafetyNet. This gives us a new port on which we can receive messages intended for the real SafetyNet service.
  3. Make any existing instance of ReportCrash exit. That way, we can ensure that ReportCrash looks up our SafetyNet port in the next step.
  4. Start ReportCrash. ReportCrash will look up SafetyNet in launchd and set the resulting port, which is the fake SafetyNet port for which we own the receive right, as the destination for EXC_CRASH messages.
  5. Trigger a crash in ReportCrash. After seeing that there are no registered handlers for the original exception type, ReportCrash will enter the process death phase. At this point XNU will see that ReportCrash registered the fake SafetyNet port to receive EXC_CRASH exceptions, so it will generate an exception message and send it to that port.
  6. We then listen on the fake SafetyNet port for the EXC_CRASH message. It will be of type mach_exception_raise, which means it will contain ReportCrash's task port.
  7. Finally, we use task_get_special_port on the ReportCrash task port to get ReportCrash's host port. Since ReportCrash is unsandboxed and runs as root, this is the host-priv port.

At the end of this stage of the sandbox escape, we end up with a usable host-priv port. This alone demonstrates that this is a serious security issue.

Stage 2: Escaping the sandbox

Even though we have the host-priv port, our goal is to fully escape the sandbox and run code as root with the task_for_pid-allow entitlement. The first step in achieving that is to simply escape the sandbox.

Technically speaking there's no reason we need to obtain the host-priv port before escaping the sandbox: these two steps are independent and can occur in either order. However, this stage will leave the system unstable if it or subsequent stages fail, so it's worth putting later.

The high-level attack is to use the same launchd vulnerability again to impersonate a system service. However, this time our goal is to impersonate a service to which a client will send its task port in a Mach message. It's easy to find by experimentation on iOS 11.2.6 that if we impersonate com.apple.CARenderServer (hereafter CARenderServer) hosted by backboardd and then communicate with com.apple.DragUI.druid.source, the unsandboxed druid daemon will send its task port in a Mach message to the fake service port.

This step of the exploit is broken on iOS 11.3 because druid no longer sends its task port in the Mach message to CARenderServer. Despite this, I'm confident that this vulnerability can still be used to escape the sandbox. One way to go about this is to look for unsandboxed services that trust input from other services. These types of "vulnerabilities" would never be exploitable without the capability to replace system services, which means they are probably a low-priority attack surface, both internally and externally to Apple.

Crashing druid

Just like with ReportCrash, we need to be able to force druid to restart in case it is already running so that it looks up our fake CARenderServer port in launchd. I decided to use a bug in libxpc that was already scheduled to be fixed for this purpose.

While looking through libxpc, I found an out-of-bounds read that could be used to force any XPC service to crash:

void _xpc_dictionary_apply_wire_f
(
        OS_xpc_dictionary *xdict,
        OS_xpc_serializer *xserializer,
        const void *context,
        bool (*applier_fn)(const char *, OS_xpc_serializer *, const void *)
)
{
...
    uint64_t count = (unsigned int)*serialized_dict_count;
    if ( count )
    {
        uint64_t depth = xserializer->depth;
        uint64_t index = 0;
        do
        {
            const char *key = _xpc_serializer_read(xserializer, 0, 0, 0);
            size_t keylen = strlen(key);
            _xpc_serializer_advance(xserializer, keylen + 1);
            if ( !applier_fn(key, xserializer, context) )
                break;
            xserializer->depth = depth;
            ++index;
        }
        while ( index < count );
    }
...
}

The problem is that the use of an unchecked strlen on attacker-controlled data allows the key for the serialized dictionary entry to extend beyond the end of the data buffer. This means the XPC service deserializing the dictionary will crash, either when strlen dereferences out-of-bounds memory or when _xpc_serializer_advance tries to advance the serializer past the end of the supplied data.

This bug was already fixed in iOS 11.3 Beta by the time I discovered it, so I did not report it to Apple. The exploit is available as an independent project in my xpc-crash repository.

In order to use this bug to crash druid, we simply need to send the druid service a malformed XPC message such that the dictionary's key is unterminated and extends to the last byte of the message.

Obtaining druid's task port

Obtaining druid's task port on iOS 11.2.6 using our service impersonation primitive is easy:

  1. Use the Mach service impersonation capability to impersonate CARenderServer.
  2. Send a message to the druid service so that it starts up.
  3. If we don't get druid's task port after a few seconds, kill druid using the XPC bug and restart it.
  4. Druid will send us its task port on the fake CARenderServer port.

Getting around the platform binary task port restrictions

Once we have druid's task port, we still need to figure out how to execute code inside the druid process.

The problem is that XNU protects task ports for platform binaries from being modified by non-platform binaries. The defense is implemented in the function task_conversion_eval, which is called by convert_port_to_locked_task and convert_port_to_task_with_exec_token:

kern_return_t
task_conversion_eval(task_t caller, task_t victim)
{
	/*
	 * Tasks are allowed to resolve their own task ports, and the kernel is
	 * allowed to resolve anyone's task port.
	 */
	if (caller == kernel_task) {
		return KERN_SUCCESS;
	}

	if (caller == victim) {
		return KERN_SUCCESS;
	}

	/*
	 * Only the kernel can can resolve the kernel's task port. We've established
	 * by this point that the caller is not kernel_task.
	 */
	if (victim == kernel_task) {
		return KERN_INVALID_SECURITY;
	}

#if CONFIG_EMBEDDED
	/*
	 * On embedded platforms, only a platform binary can resolve the task port
	 * of another platform binary.
	 */
	if ((victim->t_flags & TF_PLATFORM) && !(caller->t_flags & TF_PLATFORM)) {
#if SECURE_KERNEL
		return KERN_INVALID_SECURITY;
#else
		if (cs_relax_platform_task_ports) {
			return KERN_SUCCESS;
		} else {
			return KERN_INVALID_SECURITY;
		}
#endif /* SECURE_KERNEL */
	}
#endif /* CONFIG_EMBEDDED */

	return KERN_SUCCESS;
}

MIG conversion routines that rely on these functions, including convert_port_to_task and convert_port_to_map, will thus fail when we call them on druid's task. For example, mach_vm_write won't allow us to manipulate druid's memory.

However, while looking at the MIG file osfmk/mach/task.defs in XNU, I noticed something interesting:

/*
 *	Returns the set of threads belonging to the target task.
 */
routine task_threads(
		target_task	: task_inspect_t;
	out	act_list	: thread_act_array_t);

The function task_threads, which enumerates the threads in a task, actually takes a task_inspect_t rather than a task_t, which means MIG converts it using convert_port_to_task_inspect rather than convert_port_to_task. A quick look at convert_port_to_task_inspect reveals that this function does not perform the task_conversion_eval check, meaning we can call it successfully on platform binaries. This is interesting because the returned threads are not thread_inspect_t rights, but rather full thread_act_t rights. Put another way, task_threads promotes a non-modifiable task right into modifiable thread rights. And since there's no equivalent thread_conversion_eval, this means we can use the Mach thread APIs to modify the threads in a task even if that task is a platform binary.

In order to take advantage of this, I wrote a library called threadexec which builds a full-featured function call capability on top of the Mach threads API. The threadexec project in and of itself was a significant undertaking, but as it is only indirectly relevant to this exploit, I will forego a detailed explanation of its inner workings.

Stage 3: Installing a new host-level exception handler

Once we have the host-priv port and unsandboxed code execution inside of druid, the next stage of the full sandbox escape is to install a new host-level exception handler. This process is straightforward given our current capabilities:

  1. Get the current host-level exception handler for EXC_BAD_ACCESS by calling host_get_exception_ports.
  2. Allocate a Mach port that will be the new host-level exception handler for EXC_BAD_ACCESS.
  3. Send the host-priv port and a send right to the Mach port we just allocated over to druid.
  4. Using our execution context in druid, make druid call host_set_exception_ports to register our Mach port as the host-level exception handler for EXC_BAD_ACCESS.

After this stage, any time a process accesses an invalid memory address (and also does not have a registered exception handler), an EXC_BAD_ACCESS exception message will be sent to our new exception handler port. This will give us the task port of any crashing process, and since EXC_BAD_ACCESS is a recoverable exception, this time we can use the task port to execute code.

Stage 4: Getting ReportCrash's task port

The next stage is to trigger an EXC_BAD_ACCESS exception in ReportCrash so that its task port gets sent in an exception message to our new exception handler port:

  1. Crash ReportCrash using the previously described technique. This will cause ReportCrash to generate an EXC_BAD_ACCESS exception. Since ReportCrash has no exception handler registered for EXC_BAD_ACCESS (remember SafetyNet is registered for EXC_CRASH), the exception will be delivered to the host-level exception handler.
  2. Listen for exception messages on our host exception handler port.
  3. When we receive the exception message for ReportCrash, save the task and thread ports. Suspend the crashing thread and return KERN_SUCCESS to indicate to the kernel that the exception has been handled and ReportCrash can be resumed.
  4. Use the task and thread ports to establish an execution context inside ReportCrash just like we did with druid.

At this point, we have code execution inside an unsandboxed, root, task_for_pid-allow process.

Stage 5: Restoring the original host-level exception handler

The next two stages aren't strictly necessary but should be performed anyway.

Once we have code execution inside ReportCrash, we should reset the host-level exception handler for EXC_BAD_ACCESS using druid:

  1. Send the old host-level exception handler port over to druid.
  2. Call host_set_exception_ports in druid to re-register the old host-level exception handler for EXC_BAD_ACCESS.

This will stop our exception handler port from receiving exception messages for other crashing processes.

Stage 6: Fixing up launchd

The last step is to restore the damage we did to launchd when we freed service ports in its IPC namespace in order to impersonate them:

  1. Call task_for_pid in ReportCrash to get launchd's task port.
  2. For each service we impersonated:
    1. Get launchd's name for the send right to the fake service port. This is the original name of the real service port.
    2. Destroy the fake service port, deregistering the fake service with launchd.
    3. Call mach_port_insert_right in ReportCrash to push the real service port into launchd's IPC space under the original name.

After this step is done, the system should once again be fully functional. After successful exploitation, there should be no need to force reset the device, since the exploit repairs all the damages itself.

Post-exploitation

Blanket also packages a post-exploitation payload that bypasses amfid and spawns a bind shell. This section will describe how that is achieved.

Spawning a payload process

Even after gaining code execution in ReportCrash, using that capability is not easy: we are limited to performing individual function calls from within the process, which makes it painful to perform complex tasks. Ideally, we'd like a way to run code natively with ReportCrash's privileges, either by injecting code into ReportCrash or by spawning a new process with the same (or higher) privileges.

Blanket chooses the process spawning route. We use task_for_pid and our platform binary status in ReportCrash to get launchd's task port and create a new thread inside of launchd that we can control. We then use that thread to call posix_spawn to launch our payload binary. The payload binary can be signed with restricted entitlements, including task_for_pid-allow, to grant additional capabilities.

Bypassing amfid

In order for iOS to accept our newly spawned binary, we need to bypass codesigning. Various strategies have been discussed over the years, but the most common current strategy is to register an exception handler for amfid and then perform a data patch so that amfid crashes when trying to call MISValidateSignatureAndCopyInfo. This allows us to fake the implementation of that function to pretend that the code signature is valid.

However, there's another approach which I believe is more robust and flexible: rather than patching amfid at all, we can simply register a new amfid port in the kernel.

The kernel keeps track of which port to send messages to amfid using a host special port called HOST_AMFID_PORT. If we have unsandboxed root code execution, we can set this port to a new value. Apple has protected against this attack by checking whether the reply to a validation request really came from amfid: the cdhash of the sender is compared to amfid's cdhash. However, this doesn't actually prevent the message from being sent to a process other than amfid; it only prevents the reply from coming from a non-amfid process. If we set up a triangle where the kernel sends messages to us, we generate the reply and pass it to amfid, and then amfid sends the reply to the kernel, then we'll be able to bypass the sender check.

There are numerous advantages to this approach, of which the biggest is probably access to additional flags in the verify_code_directory service routine. Even though amfid does not use them all, there are many other output flags that amfid could set to control the behavior of codesigning. Here's a partial prototype of verify_code_directory:

kern_return_t
verify_code_directory(
		mach_port_t    amfid_port,
		amfid_path_t   path,
		uint64_t       file_offset,
		int32_t        a4,
		int32_t        a5,
		int32_t        a6,
		int32_t *      entitlements_valid,
		int32_t *      signature_valid,
		int32_t *      unrestrict,
		int32_t *      signer_type,
		int32_t *      is_apple,
		int32_t *      is_developer_code,
		amfid_a13_t    a13,
		amfid_cdhash_t cdhash,
		audit_token_t  audit);

Of particular interest for jailbreak developers is the is_apple parameter. This parameter does not appear to be used by amfid, but if set, it will cause the kernel to set the CS_PLATFORM_BINARY codesigning flag, which grants the application platform binary privileges. In particular, this means that the application can now use task ports to modify platform binaries directly.

Loopholes used in this attack

This attack takes advantage of several loopholes that aren't security vulnerabilities themselves but do minimize the effectiveness of various exploit mitigations. Not all of these need to be closed together, since some are partially redundant, but it's worth listing them all anyway.

In the kernel:

  1. task_threads can promote an inspect-only task_inspect_t to a modify-capable thread_act_t.
  2. There is no thread_conversion_eval to perform the role of task_conversion_eval for threads.
  3. A non-platform binary may use a task_inspect_t right for a platform binary.
  4. Exception messages for unsandboxed processes may be delivered to sandboxed processes, even though that provides a way to escape the sandbox. It's not clear whether there is a clean fix for this loophole.
  5. Unsandboxed code execution, the host-priv port, and the ability to crash a task_for_pid-allow process can be combined to build a task_for_pid workaround. (The workaround is: call host_set_exception_ports to set a new host-level exception handler, then crash the task_for_pid-allow process to receive its task port and execute code with the entitlement.)

In app extensions:

  1. App extensions that share an application group can communicate using Mach messages, despite the documentation suggesting that communication between the host app and the app extension should be impossible.

Recommended fixes and mitigations

I recommend the following fixes, roughly in order of importance:

  1. Only deallocate Mach ports in the launchd service routines when returning KERN_SUCCESS. This will fix the Mach port replacement vulnerability.
  2. Close the task_threads loophole allowing a non-platform binary to use the task port of a platform binary to achieve code execution.
  3. Fix crashing issues in ReportCrash.
  4. The set of Mach services reachable from within the container sandbox should be minimized. I do not see a legitimate reason for most iOS apps to communicate with ReportCrash or SafetyNet.
  5. As many processes as possible should be sandboxed. I'm not sure whether druid needs to be unsandboxed to function properly, but if not, it should be placed in an appropriate sandbox.
  6. Dead code should be eliminated. SafetyNet does not seem to be performing its intended functionality. If it is no longer needed, it should probably be removed.
  7. Close the host_set_exception_ports-based task_for_pid workaround. For example, consider whether it's worth restricting host_set_exception_ports to root or restricting the usability of the host-priv port under some configurations. This violates the elegant capabilities-based design of Mach, but host_set_exception_ports might be a promising target for abuse.
  8. Consider whether it's worth adding task_conversion_eval to task_inspect_t.

Running blanket

Blanket should work on any device running iOS 11.2.6.

  1. Download the project: 
    git clone https://github.com/bazad/blanket
cd blanket
  2. Download and build the threadexec library, which is required for blanket to inject code in processes and tasks: 
    git clone https://github.com/bazad/threadexec
cd threadexec
make ARCH=arm64 SDK=iphoneos EXTRA_CFLAGS='-mios-version-min=11.1 -fembed-bitcode'
cd ..
  3. Download Jonathan Levin's iOS binpack, which contains the binaries that will be used by the bind shell. If you change the payload to do something else, you won't need the binpack. 
    mkdir binpack
curl http://newosxbook.com/tools/binpack64-256.tar.gz | tar -xf- -C binpack
  4. Open Xcode and configure the project. You will need to change the signing identifier and specify a custom application group entitlement.
  5. Edit the file headers/config.h and change APP_GROUP to whatever application group identifier you specified earlier.

After that, you should be able to build and run the project on the device.

If blanket is successful, it will run the payload binary (source in blanket_payload/blanket_payload.c), which by default spawns a bind shell on port 4242. You can connect to that port with netcat and run arbitrary shell commands.

Credits

Many thanks to Ian Beer and Jonathan Levin for their excellent iOS security and internals research.

Timeline

I discovered this vulnerability in January of 2018, and started developing the exploit in late February. I reported this issue to Apple on April 13. Apple assigned the Mach port replacement vulnerability in launchd CVE-2018-4280, and it was patched in iOS 11.4.1 and macOS 10.13.6 on July 9.

License

Blanket is released under the MIT license.

Brandon Azad