OpenBSD has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to root

140 points - today at 1:24 PM

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Comments

Tiberium today at 2:57 PM
Seems to be found as a part of Patch The Planet [0] which is basically OpenAI giving model access and Trail of Bits using them to find vulnerabilities in OSS projects.

[0] https://openai.com/index/patch-the-planet/

trashb today at 4:39 PM
One bug found is a testament to the great diligence and culture around security of OpenBSD. Especially if you take into account the amount of resources they have been able to achieve this with.
uticus today at 3:00 PM
> Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!

https://www.openbsd.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD#Security_record

Arubis today at 3:05 PM
OpenBSD's security stance being the stuff of legend, I'm curious how many vulns have been found over the last couple months while the big model companies are flaunting their ability to find exploits. It'd be super cool to see it remain tiny.
jsiepkes today at 3:06 PM
If this is a local privilege escalation to root, why can't I find anything on https://www.openbsd.org/security.html ?
tiffanyh today at 3:33 PM
Can anyone find the mailing list thread on this topic (or does it not exist because @security are private mailing list)?

I did find another use-after-free bug from a couple months ago on the mailing list:

https://marc.info/?t=177581065500002&r=1&w=2

sys_64738 today at 5:36 PM
Anybody know why the compiler didn't pick this up?
gjvc today at 2:53 PM
from the link:

sys/kern/sysv_sem.c in OpenBSD through 7.9 has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to root. This is a context switch use-after-free after tsleep in sys_semget().

iberator today at 2:56 PM
Blasphemy
preetham_rangu today at 3:05 PM
[dead]
quotemstr today at 4:46 PM
[dead]
poly2it today at 3:13 PM
Would Rust have made this issue impossible by construction? I know Linus has spoken about Rust's promises about memory safety not being equivalently applicable in the kernel domain, so I would be curious to hear any kernel developer's perspectives.
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs today at 4:39 PM
I think it's important to point out that OpenBSD is not more secure than others, it's just that it's not widely adopted so no one really does audit it.
bitwize today at 3:19 PM
"'Nothing could have prevented this from happening,' say users of only language where this happens" comes to bite OpenBSD.
WhereIsTheTruth today at 5:20 PM
Ah, it was too good to be true, BSD too is becoming rusty.. ahh, what's left?
IveSeenItAll today at 3:34 PM
Oh, hey, a local-user-to-root exploit on OpenBSD. Cool! Those are rare, but not unheard of, unless you're talking about Windows or Linux, where you don't hear much about this bug class, just since it's common-as-rainfall.

Anyway... Does this mean OpenBSD is suddenly less interesting? Nope, it's still pretty much the best-understandable general-purpose OS, ready for your RiiR fork. So, still go for that! Burn a universe or two worth of tokens! For the planet!

Does this mean OpenBSD is suddenly less secure? Nah... Its practical security level was never that much higher than that of its nominal competitors, despite Theo's best attempts, the best of which were replicated elsewhere and majority of it went ignored. The first class counts as "innovations", the rest as "experiments" which, no matter what anyone thinks, is not the same as "failed innovations."

But I digress. Now, go and donate to OpenSSH (because I bet you typed ssh today, didn't you, you rascal?), publish your OxidizedBSD fork, or whatever. Just don't link to that "is OpenBSD secure?" site, because, well, gauche, dude(tte)!