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Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

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Re: Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

#11

Post by somat »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #7
philipwhiuk wrote: post #2

This is somewhat unsurprising - gaming software will doubtless cut corners on security-adjacent tooling (valgrind, etc) in order to ship faster. It's also somewhat irrelevant unless there's a remote chain. The Android Browser idea is interesting but is this actually a likely scenario?

Yeah, at first, I was like...Okay, so the victim needs to install a malicious app which means they already have code execution. This is just a permissions escalation? I suppose that can be bad if the target Unity app has some wide permissions. But if it can be exploited via Browser, then it means any website with an XSS vulnerability becomes an attack vector. But the attack needs to specify which app to start. So eve…

Sure it's a game engine, they are not exactly praised for their security. but my understanding is for games the end user has a mental modal where the engine isolates the users computer from the game content (the levels, art and game logic) I am not sure how relevant this mental model is to unity. Where unity is more of a game engine framework and the engine proper and the game code are more or less intertwined within that.

The gold example is the original quake where the engine had an application specific vm to run the game code. Again, not security focused and I am fairly sure vm escapes would be easy to find. But I also don't remember ever hearing news how a quake mod installed a rootkit on someones pc.

Re: Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

#12

Post by jagged-chisel »

p_ing wrote: post #10

Interesting that Windows is impacted, but on Windows you can simply drop a dx9 dll or sameNameAsExecutable.dll to "inject" code. Commonly used by modders for Unity and other games. From that perspective, I don't see how this is novel or so highly rated, again on Windows specifically. The URI handler is a separate vector that is more concerning.

How hard is it for a remote attacker to replace a DLL on your Windows system? And how hard for the remote attacker to gain access via this exploit through Unity?

With physical access, anything goes - like when you replace DLLs on your own system for modding … or changing permissions to gain access to files … or any number of “unauthorized” activities because you are physically located at the machine.

Re: Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

#14

Post by pjmlp »

p_ing wrote: post #10

Interesting that Windows is impacted, but on Windows you can simply drop a dx9 dll or sameNameAsExecutable.dll to "inject" code. Commonly used by modders for Unity and other games. From that perspective, I don't see how this is novel or so highly rated, again on Windows specifically. The URI handler is a separate vector that is more concerning.

Which is why since Windows 11 version 24H2, Windows started getting some additional sandboxing capabilities in Win32, similar to how UWP works.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/applicati...

Currently it is still opt-in, but who knows when they decide to go Apple style with Gatekeeper.

Re: Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

#16

Post by ActionHank »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #15
krapp wrote: post #13

I'll just leave this here: https://godotengine.org/

Is it known to be free from arbitrary code execution vulns? Or is it known to also contain ACEs? What's the relevance to the post?

It's opensource, so people would likely have caught this issue. It's opensource, so they can't just make some foolish, arbitrary licensing change to extort money from customers. It's opensource, so it is going to be a better engine in the long run.

Unity had a niche, their greedy execs killed that and Godot is one of the beneficiaries of that.

Re: Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

#18

Post by rbranson »

This seems pretty bad from the headline but there's no evidence of any in-the-wild exploits or if there is a feasible real-world exploit here. Some other domino(s) have to fall before it allows RCE. For instance, browser-based exploits are blocked by SELinux restrictions on dlopen from the downloads path.

Re: Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

#19

Post by jfyi »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #15
krapp wrote: post #13

I'll just leave this here: https://godotengine.org/

Is it known to be free from arbitrary code execution vulns? Or is it known to also contain ACEs? What's the relevance to the post?

A quick look shows not much has been found CVE wise with godot, and not anything on the 4.x version of the engine. There is an interesting case of it being used to build a malware loader.

I've actually been playing with it a bit recently and have had a couple mysterious crashes in their ide. It's likely ripe fruit for a curious security researcher.

Re: Arbitrary code execution in Unity Runtime

#20

Post by zulban »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #15
krapp wrote: post #13

I'll just leave this here: https://godotengine.org/

Is it known to be free from arbitrary code execution vulns? Or is it known to also contain ACEs? What's the relevance to the post?

Well the code base is surely orders of magnitude smaller (there are several legacy ui systems, network systems, etc in unity) which means far fewer security problems. And while we can debate the advantages of open source, in my opinion the development model is obviously more secure compared to closed proprietary.
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