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VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

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Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#11
post #8
post #2

I enjoyed reading the author's motivation for posting as a 0day vs Bug bounty. https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day#why

I find that part really weird. These are two extremes - you can easily notify the vendor and give them a month (or whatever period you think is reasonable) to fix the issue if you're not interested in the bounty. Google was pretty successful with enforcing 3 months. VirtualBox may not be a production service where it really matters, but publishing a 0day makes for some stressful days for many ops.

After reading the description of the exploit, it's not clear to me who is at fault. It almost seems like there are several bugs in the Intel E1000 driver, and not VirtualBox. But then again, the hypervisor should probably never allow a guest kernel to escape the VM.

If the issue actually lies with VirtualBox, VirtualBox is owned/maintained by Oracle, and based on other interactions I've seen with Oracle I wouldn't be surprised if others have submitted exploits to them before and they were ignored.

Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that part really weird. These are two extremes - you can easily notify the vendor and give them a month (or whatever period you think is reasonable) to fix the issue if you're not interested in the bounty. Google was pretty successful with enforcing 3 months. VirtualBox may not be a production service where it really matters, but publishing a 0day makes for some stressful days for many ops.

After reading the description of the exploit, it's not clear to me who is at fault. It almost seems like there are several bugs in the Intel E1000 driver, and not VirtualBox. But then again, the hypervisor should probably never allow a guest kernel to escape the VM. If the issue actually lies with VirtualBox, VirtualBox is owned/maintained by Oracle, and based on other interactions I've seen with Oracle I wouldn't be…

The bug is in the VirtualBox code that emulates an Intel E1000 device. There is no driver code involved.

Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#13
post #2

I enjoyed reading the author's motivation for posting as a 0day vs Bug bounty. https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day#why

With regard to this, maybe there’s an opportunity for a market maker to step in. An “Uber for vulnerabilities”. Having said that, I do tend to think “slap a market on it” can often lead to perverse outcome.

It is called darknet :)

Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the description of the exploit, it's not clear to me who is at fault. It almost seems like there are several bugs in the Intel E1000 driver, and not VirtualBox. But then again, the hypervisor should probably never allow a guest kernel to escape the VM. If the issue actually lies with VirtualBox, VirtualBox is owned/maintained by Oracle, and based on other interactions I've seen with Oracle I wouldn't be…

The bug is in the VirtualBox code that emulates an Intel E1000 device. There is no driver code involved.

Thanks.

> There is no driver code involved.

Yea I see that step #1 in the 'exploit algo' is to remove the e1000, I missed that earlier:

> An attacker unloads e1000.ko loaded by default in Linux guests and loads the exploit's LKM.

Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#15
post #5

Not to discount the work done here. Big high five. But I am surprised hundreds more of these bugs haven't found every week. It's Oracle. Their mission statement might as well be "we make security vulnerabilities and charge you a shitload" I would never trust any Oracle product in any form in production environment.

I hate Oracle and consider them among the most evil of companies out there. However, I don't think that's a very fair characterization of their mission statement.

I think [1] shows that it is far from being an unfair synopsis of their mission statement.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039202

Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#18
The pricing of / evaluation of bug bounties seems to be a problem. Going begging to the vendor of course results in reduced value.

Everything tends to be undervalued when there is only one buyer.

Also purchase processes tend to be slow when there is only one buyer.

It's almost as if there needs to be competition for the sale of the disclosure ... although that would have its own issues of course.

Another idea is a public timed/buy/disclosure board that offers security bugs to the vendor at a certain price but if the vendor does not want to pay within the time then it's released publicly. Effectively this is a concept in which the researcher who found the bug decides on the price and the timeframe in which it will be paid, rather than placing the decision in the hands of the vendor. This too of course has issues. It's likely that things will go this way though because security vulnerabilities are worth a great deal to companies.

There's an opportunity right here for the startup who wishes to publicly list vulnerabilities for sale to the vendor (only) at a given price within a given time with escrow, else the researcher release to public. You'd have to find a way to present it such that it is not extortion which might be hard, but in a way that sort of what bug bounty programs are - reverse extortion. Bug bounties are sort of saying "we'll pay you if you can exploit us but promise not to", whereas extortion is saying "I know how to exploit you, pay me so I won't". The big money goes to whichever startup finds how to present this in an acceptable way.

Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#19
post #2

I enjoyed reading the author's motivation for posting as a 0day vs Bug bounty. https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day#why

With regard to this, maybe there’s an opportunity for a market maker to step in. An “Uber for vulnerabilities”. Having said that, I do tend to think “slap a market on it” can often lead to perverse outcome.

These already exist. There are darknet firms that independently verify that an exploit is real (staking their reputation that they won't take it and run once shown), and then open it to the market.

The main trouble is that for it to fully work, you need to have the big corps bidding against black hats in this market. I can't see that happening. It'd have big corps dirtying their hands too openly.

The other trouble is that a lot of the damages (or value) of software bugs aren't readily fungible to dollars. For example, to actually profit from the Ashley Madison hack you'd need to blackmail a whole lot of people, which is incredibly time consuming. So software firms would be able to underpay for most exploits: The amount they'd be have to pay is at most what a black hat can profit from the bug, which is necessarily less than the real damages because the black hat has to cost for fungibility.

Re: VirtualBox E1000 Guest-to-Host Escape

#20
post #3
post #2

I enjoyed reading the author's motivation for posting as a 0day vs Bug bounty. https://github.com/MorteNoir1/virtualbox_e1000_0day#why

The author has a number of great points, with an overarching theme that how we handle security bugs is ridiculous.

Especially the websites/branding of bugs, like Heartbleed, SHAttered, etc. It seems like researchers do this to propel their own fame, for probably financial motives. I imagine it's pretty lucrative to have been the "co-founder" of Heartbleed just like it is lucrative to be the co-founder of a well-known startup.
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