Binding the Daemon: FreeBSD Kernel Stack and Heap Exploitation
Abstract
FreeBSD (http://www.freebsd.org/) is widely accepted as one of the most reliable and performance-driven operating systems currently available in both the open source and proprietary worlds. While the exploitation of kernel vulnerabilities has been researched in the context of the Windows and Linux operating systems, FreeBSD, and BSD systems in general, have not received the same attention. This presentation will initially examine the exploitation of kernel stack overflow vulnerabilities on FreeBSD. The development process of a privilege escalation kernel stack smashing exploit will be documented for vulnerability CVE-2008-3531. The second part of the presentation will present a detailed security analysis of the Universal Memory Allocator (UMA), the FreeBSD kernel's memory allocator. We will examine how UMA overflows can lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the latest stable FreeBSD kernel (8.0-RELEASE), and we will develop an exploitation methodology for privilege escalation and kernel continuation.
