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Attacking the kernel via its command line

Attacking the kernel via its command line

Posted Jun 22, 2017 13:36 UTC (Thu) by thestinger (guest, #91827)
In reply to: Attacking the kernel via its command line by walters
Parent article: Attacking the kernel via its command line

Since the attacker gained root with RCE + LPE, they control all of the persistent OS state. On Android, they can persist via /data/dalvik-cache which provides code execution as system_server and base system apps with special privileges granted via being located in /system/priv-app or their signatures. CopperheadOS disables /data/dalvik-cache usage for code and instead uses full pre-compilation for all of the base system. An attacker can still persist via a regular unprivileged app and they can grant their app all of the privileges available to third party apps including those that require explicit user consent. They aren't limited to regular permissions, since they can also make it an accessibility service and a device manager. There's also a lot of other highly trusted OS state. The intention in CopperheadOS is to chip away at all of that.

The unfortunate reality of verified boot is that you can't improve it via settings. There cannot simply be a setting to disable attack surface or to implement more user control because an attacker that has gained root access can change any setting, install any app, grant any dynamic privilege that's possible to set for third party code, etc.

Now that ChromeOS is gaining Android app support (currently in the Beta channel), that all applies to ChromeOS within the Android userspace container. An attacker would need a kernel exploit to get at the non-Android OS, but they'll have control as system_server since it's just standard Android with /data/dalvik-cache and that gives them a huge amount of attack surface since it's near root (in this case, user namespace root, but that still exposes most kernel attack surface).


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