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opencontainers runc contains procfs race condition with a shared volume mount

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 28, 2020 in opencontainers/runc • Updated May 31, 2024

Package

gomod github.com/opencontainers/runc (Go)

Affected versions

< 1.0.0-rc9.0.20200122160610-2fc03cc11c77

Patched versions

1.0.0-rc9.0.20200122160610-2fc03cc11c77

Description

Impact

By crafting a malicious root filesystem (with /proc being a symlink to a directory which was inside a volume shared with another running container), an attacker in control of both containers can trick runc into not correctly configuring the container's security labels and not correctly masking paths inside /proc which contain potentially-sensitive information about the host (or even allow for direct attacks against the host).

In order to exploit this bug, an untrusted user must be able to spawn custom containers with custom mount configurations (such that a volume is shared between two containers). It should be noted that we consider this to be a fairly high level of access for an untrusted user -- and we do not recommend allowing completely untrusted users to have such degrees of access without further restrictions.

Specific Go Package Affected

github.com/opencontainers/runc/libcontainer

Patches

This vulnerability has been fixed in 1.0.0-rc10. It should be noted that the current fix is effectively a hot-fix, and there are known ways for it to be worked around (such as making the entire root filesystem a shared volume controlled by another container). We recommend that users review their access policies to ensure that untrusted users do not have such high levels of controls over container mount configuration.

Workarounds

If you are not providing the ability for untrusted users to configure mountpoints for runc (or through a higher-level tool such as docker run -v) then you are not vulnerable to this issue. This exploit requires fairly complicated levels of access (which are available for some public clouds but are not necessarily available for all deployments).

Additionally, it appears as though it is not possible to exploit this vulnerability through Docker (due to the order of mounts Docker generates). However you should not depend on this, as it may be possible to work around this roadblock.

Credits

This vulnerability was discovered by Cure53, as part of a third-party security audit.

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

References

@cyphar cyphar published to opencontainers/runc Jan 28, 2020
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Feb 12, 2020
Reviewed May 24, 2021
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 27, 2021
Last updated May 31, 2024

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N/E:U/RL:U/RC:U

EPSS score

0.046%
(19th percentile)

CVE ID

CVE-2019-19921

GHSA ID

GHSA-fh74-hm69-rqjw

Source code

No known source code
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