A flaw was found in QEMU in the uefi-vars virtual device. When the guest writes to register UEFI_VARS_REG_BUFFER_SIZE, the .write callback uefi_vars_write is invoked. The function allocates a heap buffer without zeroing the memory, leaving the buffer filled with residual data from prior allocations. When the guest later reads from register UEFI_VARS_REG_PIO_BUFFER_TRANSFER, the .read callback uefi_vars_read returns leftover metadata or other sensitive process memory from the previously allocated buffer, leading to an information disclosure vulnerability.
Weakness
The product stores, transfers, or shares a resource that contains sensitive information, but it does not properly remove that information before the product makes the resource available to unauthorized actors.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qemu | Ubuntu | devel | * |
Extended Description
Resources that may contain sensitive data include documents, packets, messages, databases, etc. While this data may be useful to an individual user or small set of users who share the resource, it may need to be removed before the resource can be shared outside of the trusted group. The process of removal is sometimes called cleansing or scrubbing. For example, a product for editing documents might not remove sensitive data such as reviewer comments or the local pathname where the document is stored. Or, a proxy might not remove an internal IP address from headers before making an outgoing request to an Internet site.
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.
Some tools can automatically analyze documents to redact, strip, or “sanitize” private information, although some human review might be necessary. Tools may vary in terms of which document formats can be processed.
When calling an external program to automatically generate or convert documents, invoke the program with any available options that avoid generating sensitive metadata. Some formats have well-defined fields that could contain private data, such as Exchangeable image file format (Exif), which can contain potentially sensitive metadata such as geolocation, date, and time [REF-1515] [REF-1516].