SECURITY.NNOV: file locking and security (group policy DoS on Windows 2000 domain)

[3APA3A <3APA3A () SECURITY NNOV RU>]

Hello bugtraq,

Topic                   : File locking and security
Author                  : 3APA3A <3APA3A () security nnov ru>
Affected software       : Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and may be
                          another systems
Exploitable             : Yes
Remotely exploitable    : No
Category                : Design flow


Background:

Application  can  lock  the  file  after  file  description  is  open by
application  (or  in  open() call itself). Usually there are 2 modes for
locking  -  SHARED  and  EXCLUSIVE  locks.  Only one application can put
EXCLUSIVE lock on file. If file is locked exclusively no lock can be put
on  file by another process (we will not consider a case of parent/child
processes). The main problem of file locking is this mechanism (at least
on  tested  systems  -  *BSD,  Windows NT, Linux) doesn't check any file
permission  or  the  mode  the  file is open before locking. It makes it
possible  for  application  with read-only access to the file to lock it
exclusively.

The way file locks interfere with file access depends on OS. There are 2
possible  situations:  moderate  and  non-moderate  file locks. *BSD and
linux  use  non-moderate  locking, while Windows NT locking is moderate.
What  does it mean? Under Unix file locking is only checked then another
application  tries  to  lock  the  file. If application doesn't use file
locking  it  will  not be affected by file locking. Under Windows things
are  different.  If  one  application exclusively locks the file another
application  can't access this file even if it doesn't tries to lock the
file.  It should be treated as a design flow, because insecure in nature
mechanism  of  file  locking  interacts  with  secure  mechanism of file
access.

Resume:

Security  aware  application  should  correctly process the situation of
locked  file. Application should not rely on ability to lock (or in case
of Windows on ability to access) publicly readable files.

Problem:

Many  security-critical  mechanism  under  Windows (I am not aware about
Unix  ones,  but  it  doesn't mean that only Windows is affected) can be
DoS'ed by file locking.

Details:

For unprivileged user

1.  It's possible to stop security policies and logon scripts by locking
policy files on domain controllers
2.   It's   possible  to lock screensaver file to prevent workstation to
be locked by another user
3. It's possible to deny access to administrative utilities and/or batch
jobs from running by administrator or system
4. It's possible to deny another user's logon in many ways
5. It's possible to deny access to shared programs, documents, etc...
...

Workaround:

It's not a bug to be patched.

Vendor:

Microsoft  was  contacted on September, 7 2001. Last reply on this issue
was on October, 13.

-=-=- "Microsoft Security Response Center" <secure () microsoft com> -=-=-

Wanted to get together and let you know what we've found out and the
plan moving forward.  You're right that it's possible for someone to
block group policy by locking a file.  We've considered quite a few
different options for preventing someone from putting a lock on the
file, but so far all of them would require fairly massive changes to the
system architecture, and we're very leery of making such drastic changes
via a patch.  

I'd like to propose a different solution, and see what your reaction
would be.  We currently have an auditing event that occurs when group
policy fails to be applied for any reason.  The description of the error
isn't as clear as it could be, and we'd propose making the error message
much more descriptive and useful to the administrator.  Also, we'd
propose that anytime group policy can't be applied, a pop-up would
appear on the client machine, describing the problem and instructing the
user to contact the system administrator.  Clearly, if an attacker saw
the error message, he wouldn't call the administrator -- but one of the
other users on the system would.  The administrator could then check the
error log, find out who had locked the file, and take appropriate action
against them.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Of  cause,  it's "security through obscurity", but I believe that's best
can be done in this situation.

Testing:

You   can   use   attached   locktest.c   (for   compiled   version  see
http://www.security.nnov.ru/files/locktest.exe)  to  test  file  locking
issues under Windows.

Try
locktest.exe READ NONE <filename>

(be  careful - during WRITE test locktest damages the file, test it only
on specially created files)

-- 
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Attachment: locktest.c
Description: