Research and Development

root

By way of an introduction to our talk at Black Hat Europe, Security Advisory EMEAR would like to share the background on our recent research into some common Active Directory integration solutions. Just as with Windows, these solutions can be utilized to join UNIX infrastructure to enterprises’ Active Directory forests. Continue reading

In this post we look at an alternative to compiling shared object files when exploiting vulnerable setUID programs on Linux. At a high level we’re just going to copy the binary and insert some shellcode. First we take a look the circumstances that might lead you to use this option. Also check out this previous post on setUID exploitation. Continue reading

In this post we look at at one of many security problems that pentesters and security auditors find in setUID programs. It’s fairly common for child processes to inherit any open file handles in the parent process (though there are ways to avoid this). In certain cases this can present a security flaw. This is what we’ll look at in the context of setUID programs on Linux. Continue reading

It is a topic that often comes up on client engagements, usually when running structured build reviews of Linux “gold builds”, but occasionally when trying to explain in detail how we used a Linux system to pivot internally.

SetUID and setGID files are inevitably a risk, potentially allowing attackers to elevate privileges to root from a basic user. When shared out on SMB or NFS shares they can spread the risk even further. Continue reading

Consider the case of a setUID binary that runs as root and allows the caller to execute certain other scripts and binaries from a given restricted directory. The Portcullis Labs team recently spotted such a case and I was asked to take a look to determine exploitablity. What follows is a short analysis of what I found. Continue reading