A Systematic Study of Elastic Objects in Kernel Exploitation

Yueqi Chen, Zhenpeng Lin, Xinyu Xing

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

38 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent research has proposed various methods to perform kernel exploitation and bypass kernel protection. For example, security researchers have demonstrated an exploitation method that utilizes the characteristic of elastic kernel objects to bypass KASLR, disclose stack/heap cookies, and even perform arbitrary read in the kernel. While this exploitation method is considered a commonly adopted approach to disclosing critical kernel information, there is no evidence indicating a strong need for developing a new defense mechanism to limit this exploitation method. It is because the effectiveness of this exploitation method is demonstrated only on anecdotal kernel vulnerabilities. It is unclear whether such a method is useful for a majority of kernel vulnerabilities. To answer this question, we propose a systematic approach. It utilizes static/dynamic analysis methods to pinpoint elastic kernel objects and then employs constraint solving to pair them to corresponding kernel vulnerabilities. In this work, we implement our proposed method as a tool - ELOISE. Using this tool on three popular OSes (Linux, FreeBSD, and XNU), we discover that elastic objects are pervasive in general caches. Evaluating the effectiveness of these elastic objects on 40 kernel vulnerabilities across three OSes, we observe that they can enable most of the vulnerabilities to bypass KASLR and heap cookie protector. Besides, we also observe that these elastic objects can even escalate the exploitability of some vulnerabilities allowing them to perform arbitrary read in the kernel. Motivated by these observations, we further introduce a new defense mechanism to mitigate the threat of elastic kernel objects. We prototype our defense mechanism on Linux, showing this mechanism introduces negligible overhead.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCCS 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages1165-1184
Number of pages20
ISBN (Electronic)9781450370899
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 30 2020
Event27th ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2020 - Virtual, Online, United States
Duration: Nov 9 2020Nov 13 2020

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
ISSN (Print)1543-7221

Conference

Conference27th ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Online
Period11/9/2011/13/20

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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