ASUS DSL-AC3100 Router Firmware DHCP Bug

It's great that ASUS makes the GPL firmware source for their routers easy to download. I wish more vendors would do this.

Unfortunately, it didn't take more than a few minutes of auditing to come across the DHCPd code. Lets look at the original non ASUS code in wide-dhcp-server.

int
dhcp6_get_options(p, ep, optinfo)
        struct dhcp6opt *p, *ep;
        struct dhcp6_optinfo *optinfo;
{
        struct dhcp6opt *np, opth;
        int i, opt, optlen, reqopts, num;
        u_int16_t num16;
        char *bp, *cp, *val;
        u_int16_t val16;
        u_int32_t val32;
        struct dhcp6opt_ia optia;
        struct dhcp6_ia ia;
        struct dhcp6_list sublist;
        int authinfolen;

        bp = (char *)p;
        for (; p + 1 <= ep; p = np) {
                struct duid duid0;

                /*
                 * get the option header.  XXX: since there is no guarantee
                 * about the header alignment, we need to make a local copy.
                 */
                memcpy(&opth, p, sizeof(opth));
                optlen = ntohs(opth.dh6opt_len);

...
                case DH6OPT_STATUS_CODE:
                        if (optlen < sizeof(u_int16_t))
                                goto malformed;
                        memcpy(&val16, cp, sizeof(val16));
                        num16 = ntohs(val16);
                        debug_printf(LOG_DEBUG, "", "  status code: %s",
                            dhcp6_stcodestr(num16));

It's pretty clear that the options parsing code has to verify optlen. We also note that optlen is a signed 32-bit integer and that optlen casts ntohs() which returns a 16-bit unsigned int by default.

Lets look at the router firmware code which has added its own extensions:

      // brcm: get ACS URL from dhcp server option 17
      case DH6OPT_VENDOR_OPTS:
      {
          char *option_string;
          int option_len;
          u_int32_t enterprise_id;
          u_int16_t sub_option_num=1;
          int sub_option_offset=0;
          int sub_option_len=0;

          /* No guarentee on alignment, so copy to word variable */
          memcpy(&enterprise_id, cp, sizeof(enterprise_id));
          enterprise_id = ntohl(enterprise_id);

          // the first word in the data is the enterprise number.
          // I cannot find an Enterprise number for Broadband Forum in the
          // IANA database, so don't check for now.  See page 85 of RFC 3315.
          dprintf(LOG_DEBUG, FNAME, "    enterprise-number: %d (0x%x)\n",
                  enterprise_id, enterprise_id);

          // advance to point to the real data
          option_string = cp + 4;
          option_len = optlen - 4;

          // look for sub option 1: ManagementServer.URL
          if (findEncapVendorSpecificOption(option_string, option_len,
                 sub_option_num, &sub_option_offset, &sub_option_len))
          {
             int copyLen = sizeof(optinfo->acsURL) - 1;
             if (copyLen > sub_option_len) copyLen=sub_option_len;

             memcpy(optinfo->acsURL, &option_string[sub_option_offset], copyLen);
             optinfo->acsURL[copyLen] = '\0';
             // fprintf(stderr, "Found acsURL %s!!\n", optinfo->acsURL);
          }

Now we note that option_len is optlen - 4. There is no input validation on optlen. Because option_len is a signed int, if we make optlen < 4, we can get a negative value into option_len. Now _if_ we were able to enter the code that does:

             int copyLen = sizeof(optinfo->acsURL) - 1;
             if (copyLen > sub_option_len) copyLen=sub_option_len;

And sub_option_len was also negative, then we could get a buffer overflow, since copyLen and sub_option_len are both signed. Lets look at the function that triggers all of this: 

int findEncapVendorSpecificOption(const char *option, int len,
                                  u_int16_t sub_option_num,
                                  int *sub_option_offset, int *sub_option_len)
{
   struct dhcp6opt hdr;
   int i=0;
   u_int16_t curr_sub_option_num;
   int curr_sub_option_len;

   while (i < len)
   {
      /* no guarantee on alignment, so copy header */
      memcpy(&hdr, &option[i], sizeof(hdr));
      curr_sub_option_num = ntohs(hdr.dh6opt_type);
      curr_sub_option_len = ntohs(hdr.dh6opt_len);

      /* sanity check */
      if (i + 4 + curr_sub_option_len > len)
      {
         printf("sub-option exceeds len, %d %d %d",
                 i, curr_sub_option_len, len);
         return 0;
      }

      if (sub_option_num == curr_sub_option_num)
      {
         *sub_option_offset = i+4;
         *sub_option_len = curr_sub_option_len;
         return 1;
      }

      i += 4 + curr_sub_option_len;  /* advance i to the next sub-option */
   }

   return 0;
}

Hmm.. we get blocked. When len is negative, we can't enter the loop. Sure, we can still get out of bounds reads for option_len is positive since len is not validated. But it's unlikely that we can use this bug for anything interesting in terms of memory corruption.

So... tl;dr No input validation on length in vendor specific dhcp code. Out of bounds memory access. No memory corruption.

What other goodies exist in vendor supplied GPL source code?

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