OpenBSD Double-Free Vulnerability Let Attackers Exploit NFS Client & Server

   November 16, 2024  Posted in CyberSecurityNews


OpenBSD has released an important bug fix addressing a potential double-free vulnerability within its Network File System (NFS) client and server implementation.

OpenBSD is a Unix-like operating system renowned for its strong focus on security, simplicity, and correctness, with features like OpenSSH, PF (firewall), and W^X. It emphasizes “secure by default” principles, proactive security measures, and clean code

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The bug, identified in the NFS subsystem, could potentially lead to a double-free scenario, a condition that occurs when a program attempts to free a region of memory more than once.

This could result in undefined behavior, including crashes, memory corruption, or potential security risks such as exploitation by malicious actors. The errata also highlights the risk of using uninitialized variables in the NFS server’s error-handling code, which could lead to further instability.

The issue, documented in Errata 008, revolves around improper handling of mbuf (memory buffer) structures and the use of uninitialized variables in error-handling routines.

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Affected Components:

The security update targets two main issues:

  1. A possible double-free vulnerability in the NFS client and server implementation, which could potentially lead to memory corruption or system instability.
  2. An uninitialized variable in the error handling of the NFS server, which could result in unpredictable behavior or information leakage.

To resolve this issue, the OpenBSD developers have made several crucial changes to the NFS codebase, ensuring that memory buffers (specifically info.nmi_mrep) are set to NULL after being freed.

This prevents accidental reuse of these buffers, mitigating the risk of double freeing. Furthermore, the patch ensures that uninitialized variables in error-handling paths are properly managed.

The changes affect two main files in the OpenBSD source code:

  1. nfs_socket.c (NFS socket handling code)
  2. nfsm_subs.h (NFS macro and function definitions)

How to Apply the Patch

To apply the patch, users can follow these steps:

  1. Verify the patch signature using OpenBSD’s signify tool:
   signify -Vep /etc/signify/openbsd-75-base.pub -x 008_nfs.patch.sig -m - | (cd /usr/src && patch -p0)
  1. After applying the patch, rebuild and install the new kernel:
   KK=$(sysctl -n kern.osversion | cut -d# -f1)
   cd /usr/src/sys/arch/$(machine)/compile/$KK
   make obj
   make config
   make
   make install
  1. Reboot the system to apply the new kernel.

The nature of these vulnerabilities suggests that attackers could potentially use them to cause system instability or gain unauthorized access, even though the OpenBSD team has not reported any known exploits in the wild.

Security experts recommend that all OpenBSD 7.5 users apply this patch as soon as possible to mitigate any potential risks associated with these NFS vulnerabilities.

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