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‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

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Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#171

Post by jl6 »

NohatCoder wrote: post #169
xavxav wrote: post #45

Not to go all 'Rust Evangelism Strike Force' but almost universally, these exploits leverage memory unsafety somewhere in the stack, usually in a parser of some kind (image, text, etc). The fact that this is still tolerated in our core systems is a pox on our industry. You don't have to use Rust, and it won't eliminate every bug (far from it), but memory safety is not optional . We truly need to work more towards eli…

Nothing wrong with Rust, but I still think making operating systems with airtight sandboxing and proper permission enforcement is the only thing that can truly solve these issues.

Still not enough, because apps still need to interact with the outside world, so there would have to be intentional holes in the sandbox out through which the compromised app could act maliciously.

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#172

Post by saagarjha »

jquery wrote: post #168
saagarjha wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily; see https://github.com/LinusHenze/Fugu14/blob/master/Writeup.pdf for example. It's a full chain that repeatedly escalates privileges without exploiting any memory safety bugs by tricking privileged subsystems into giving it more access than it should have, all the way up through and beyond kernel code execution.

That’s not a zero-click vulnerability though. I didn’t read the entire pdf but 2 of the first 4 steps involve active user participation and assistance (install exploit app 1 and exploit app 2). I think regardless, you’re right, we will still have logic bugs… but that example is also an “exception proves the rule” kind of thing.

It's not a zero click, that is correct. I presented it as an example of how every layers of Apple's stack, far beyond what is typically targeted by a zero-click exploit chain, can still have logic bugs that allow for privilege escalation. It's not just a memory corruption thing, although I will readily agree that trying to reduce the amount of unsafe code is a good place to start fixing these problems.

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#173

Post by b112 »

roca wrote: post #40
b112 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no safe way to code anything, ever. (Yes people, and Apple should try, but...)

This absolutist statement is basically meaningless. Taking Rust as an example (use Swift or even Java if that works better for your use-case), we know how to write Rust code that is guaranteed to be free from common classes of bugs that these zero-click attacks exploit. Yes, we aren't going to get rid of all bugs, yes, zero-click attacks might still be possible once in a while, but we can make it much, much harder an…

we know how to write Rust code that is guaranteed to be free from common classes of bugs that these

No we don't.

You are trying to shift the sands, by saying "But.. this one thing we can do...", except even that isn't true.

If we did, it wouldn't keep happening, year after year, decade after decade.

But even with peer reviews, with people supposedly knowing how, well.. it just keeps happening.

Do you think every occurrence is random chance? Or is it, maybe, just maybe, that humans can't write bug free code?

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#174

Post by qualudeheart »

fsflover wrote: post #20

Qubes OS defends even from such attacks: it doesn't show non-ASCII symbols in window titles in dom0: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/config-files . I think this OS deserves more attention. By the way, new version 4.1 is out: https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2022/02/04/qubes-4-1-0/ .

I used Qubes as a daily driver for much of 2021. It hogged too much ram so I stopped. Never disliked the lack of non-ascii support. Security is always more important.

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#175

Post by anon_123g987 »

NohatCoder wrote: post #169
xavxav wrote: post #45

Not to go all 'Rust Evangelism Strike Force' but almost universally, these exploits leverage memory unsafety somewhere in the stack, usually in a parser of some kind (image, text, etc). The fact that this is still tolerated in our core systems is a pox on our industry. You don't have to use Rust, and it won't eliminate every bug (far from it), but memory safety is not optional . We truly need to work more towards eli…

Nothing wrong with Rust, but I still think making operating systems with airtight sandboxing and proper permission enforcement is the only thing that can truly solve these issues.

And what language should we use to create such an OS? Maybe Rust?

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#176

Post by simion314 »

saagarjha wrote: post #154
bilbo0s wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, an enormous amount of work has gone into making sure things like Python, .NET, and Rust are secure. And the security researchers still regularly find bugs and sell 0-days. That's not even counting the work that's gone into the gold standard that is the JVM. Any serious minded security expert could tell you that guaranteeing security on any of these platforms is a sysiphean effort. Your platform is state…

> Don't do things on the GPU that compromise the system. Easier said than done…

If say a Game or 3D program crashes the system or causes a security issue the problem is the driver or the hardware. A correct driver and hardware should not allow any user level application to cause issues.

I know is hard, this GPU companies need to keep backward compatibility, support different operating systems(and versions), support old stuff that worked by mistake. and probably some "benchmark cheeting might be hidden in the proprietary drivers too".

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#177

Post by omegalulw »

benreesman wrote: post #70
xavxav wrote: post #45

Not to go all 'Rust Evangelism Strike Force' but almost universally, these exploits leverage memory unsafety somewhere in the stack, usually in a parser of some kind (image, text, etc). The fact that this is still tolerated in our core systems is a pox on our industry. You don't have to use Rust, and it won't eliminate every bug (far from it), but memory safety is not optional . We truly need to work more towards eli…

Honestly at this point I’ve given in and am now advocating that we rewrite every damned widget from scratch in Rust, because by the time we’re mostly done, my career will be winding down, and seeing that shit still gets pwned like, exactly as much, will be “good TV”. Rust is cool because it’s got a solid-if-slow build story that doesn’t really buy into the otherwise ubiquitous .so brain damage. Rust is cool because H…

Do you imagine how long it would take to compile the Linux kernel if it were rust only? Not to mention the kernel has to allow for third party closed source stuff like drivers, wouldn't that force you to allow unsafe Rust and put you back to square one?

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#178

Post by saagarjha »

simion314 wrote: post #176
saagarjha wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't do things on the GPU that compromise the system. Easier said than done…

If say a Game or 3D program crashes the system or causes a security issue the problem is the driver or the hardware. A correct driver and hardware should not allow any user level application to cause issues. I know is hard, this GPU companies need to keep backward compatibility, support different operating systems(and versions), support old stuff that worked by mistake. and probably some "benchmark cheeting might be…

Drivers and hardware are not designed by application developers.

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#179

Post by cute_boi »

zuzun wrote: post #71
xavxav wrote: post #45

Not to go all 'Rust Evangelism Strike Force' but almost universally, these exploits leverage memory unsafety somewhere in the stack, usually in a parser of some kind (image, text, etc). The fact that this is still tolerated in our core systems is a pox on our industry. You don't have to use Rust, and it won't eliminate every bug (far from it), but memory safety is not optional . We truly need to work more towards eli…

Memory safety is optional in Rust. It might not be obvious at the moment, because Rust is written by enthusiasts who enjoy fighting with the compiler until their code compiles, but once developers will be forced to use it on their jobs with tight deadlines, unsafe becomes the pass-the-borrow-checker cheat code.

This is kinda disingenuous. Whenever we people use unsafe its like an alarm because you can setup CI system that warns DevOps team regarding the usage of unsafe code.

And, most of the time unsafe code is not required. I think many people will just use clone too much, or Arc rather than unsafe. Additionally, I have never seen unsafe code at least where I work.

Re: ‘Zero-click’ hacks are growing in popularity

#180

Post by anon_123g987 »

qualudeheart wrote: post #174
fsflover wrote: post #20

Qubes OS defends even from such attacks: it doesn't show non-ASCII symbols in window titles in dom0: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/config-files . I think this OS deserves more attention. By the way, new version 4.1 is out: https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2022/02/04/qubes-4-1-0/ .

I used Qubes as a daily driver for much of 2021. It hogged too much ram so I stopped. Never disliked the lack of non-ascii support. Security is always more important.

> Never disliked the lack of non-ascii support.

Ah, the elusive quadruple-negative.

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