CVE-2022-47952

lxc-user-nic in lxc through 5.0.1 is installed setuid root, and may allow local users to infer whether any file exists, even within a protected directory tree, because Failed to open often indicates that a file does not exist, whereas does not refer to a network namespace path often indicates that a file exists. NOTE: this is different from CVE-2018-6556 because the CVE-2018-6556 fix design was based on the premise that we will report back to the user that the open() failed but the user has no way of knowing why it failed; however, in many realistic cases, there are no plausible reasons for failing except that the file does not exist.

Weakness

The product behaves differently or sends different responses under different circumstances in a way that is observable to an unauthorized actor, which exposes security-relevant information about the state of the product, such as whether a particular operation was successful or not.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
• Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.
• Ensure that error messages only contain minimal details that are useful to the intended audience and no one else. The messages need to strike the balance between being too cryptic (which can confuse users) or being too detailed (which may reveal more than intended). The messages should not reveal the methods that were used to determine the error. Attackers can use detailed information to refine or optimize their original attack, thereby increasing their chances of success.
• If errors must be captured in some detail, record them in log messages, but consider what could occur if the log messages can be viewed by attackers. Highly sensitive information such as passwords should never be saved to log files.
• Avoid inconsistent messaging that might accidentally tip off an attacker about internal state, such as whether a user account exists or not.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/189.html

References

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lxc/+bug/1783591/comments/45
• https://github.com/MaherAzzouzi/CVE-2022-47952
• https://github.com/lxc/lxc/blob/0b83d71c2c8f3bac9503f894cd84584f79258bb3/lxc.spec.in#L274
• https://github.com/lxc/lxc/blob/0b83d71c2c8f3bac9503f894cd84584f79258bb3/src/lxc/cmd/lxc_user_nic.c#L1085-L1104
• https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2023/08/msg00025.html