CVE-2022-23522: Arbitrary File Write when Extracting Tarballs retrieved from a remote location using in mindsdb

First published: Thu Mar 30 2023(Updated: )

### Summary An unsafe extraction is being performed using `shutil.unpack_archive()` from a remotely retrieved tarball. Which may lead to the writing of the extracted files to an unintended location. This vulnerability is sometimes called a **TarSlip** or a **ZipSlip variant**. ### Details Unpacking files using the high-level function `shutil.unpack_archive()` from a potentially malicious tarball without validating that the destination file path remained within the intended destination directory may cause files to be overwritten outside the destination directory. As can be seen in the vulnerable snippet code source, an archive is being retrieved using the `download_file()` function from a remote location which is a user-provided permanent storage bucket `s3`. Immediately after being retrieved, the tarball is unsafely unpacked using the function `shutil.unpack_archive()`. The vulnerable code is [L128..L129](https://github.com/mindsdb/mindsdb/blob/69c76e727b8067f32b06ab83bb835a8c416c4f21/mindsdb/interfaces/storage/fs.py#L128..L129) in [fs.py](https://github.com/mindsdb/mindsdb/blob/69c76e727b8067f32b06ab83bb835a8c416c4f21/mindsdb/interfaces/storage/fs.py) file. ```python3 def __init__(self): super().__init__() if 's3_credentials' in self.config['permanent_storage']: self.s3 = boto3.client('s3', **self.config['permanent_storage']['s3_credentials']) else: self.s3 = boto3.client('s3') # User provided remote storage! self.bucket = self.config['permanent_storage']['bucket'] def get(self, local_name, base_dir): remote_name = local_name remote_ziped_name = f'{remote_name}.tar.gz' local_ziped_name = f'{local_name}.tar.gz' local_ziped_path = os.path.join(base_dir, local_ziped_name) os.makedirs(base_dir, exist_ok=True) # Retrieve a potentially malicious tarball self.s3.download_file(self.bucket, remote_ziped_name, local_ziped_path) # Perform an unsafe extraction shutil.unpack_archive(local_ziped_path, base_dir) os.system(f'chmod -R 777 {base_dir}') os.remove(local_ziped_path) ``` ### PoC The following PoC is provided for illustration purposes only. It showcases the risk of extracting a non-harmless text file `sim4n6.txt` to one of the parent locations rather than the intended current folder. ```bash > tar --list -f archive.tar tar: Removing leading "../../../" from member names ../../../sim4n6.txt > python3 Python 3.10.6 (main, Nov 2 2022, 18:53:38) [GCC 11.3.0] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import shutil >>> shutil.unpack_archive("archive.tar") >>> exit() > test -f ../../../sim4n6.txt && echo "sim4n6.txt exists" sim4n6.txt exists ``` ### Attack Scenario An attacker could craft a malicious tarball with a filename path, such as `../../../../../../../../etc/passwd`, and then serve the archive remotely using a personal bucket `s3`, thus, retrieve the tarball through **mindsdb** and overwrite the system files of the hosting server. ### Mitigation Potential mitigation could be to: - Use a safer module, like `zipfile`. - Validate the location of the extracted files and discard those with malicious paths such as relative path `..` or absolute path such as `/etc/password`. - Perform a checksum verification for the retrieved archive, but hard-coding the hashes may be cumbersome and difficult to manage.

Credit: security-advisories@github.com security-advisories@github.com

Affected Software	Affected Version	How to fix
pip/mindsdb	<22.11.4.3	22.11.4.3
Mindsdb Mindsdb	<22.11.4.3
	<22.11.4.3

CVE-2022-23522: Arbitrary File Write when Extracting Tarballs retrieved from a remote location using in mindsdb

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