:: Deepquest ::

OpenSSH can forward TCP sockets and UNIX domain sockets. If privilege separation is disabled, then on the server side, the forwarding is handled by a child of sshd that has root privileges. For TCP server sockets, sshd explicitly checks whether an attempt is made to bind to a low port (below IPPORT_RESERVED) and, if so, requires the client to authenticate as root. However, for UNIX domain sockets, no such security measures are implemented. This means that, using “ssh -L”, an attacker who is permitted to log in as a normal user over SSH can effectively connect to non-abstract unix domain sockets with root privileges. On systems that run systemd, this can for example be exploited by asking systemd to add an LD_PRELOAD environment variable for all following daemon launches and then asking it to restart cron or so. The attached exploit demonstrates this – if it is executed on a system with systemd where the user is allowed to ssh to his own account and where privsep is disabled, it yields a root shell.