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In this second post of the series, I’ll exploit a use-after-free in the Payment component of Chrome (1125614/GHSL-2020-165), a bug that I reported in September 2020 that only affected version 86 of Chrome, which was in beta. I’ll use it to escape the Chrome sandbox to gain privilege of a third party App on Android from a compromised renderer.
In this post I’ll go through the exploit of Chrome issue 1125614 (GHSL-2020-165), a bug that I reported in September 2020. This vulnerability will be used for escaping the Chrome sandbox to gain third-party app privilege from a compromised Chrome renderer and as such, I’ll assume that I have a compromised renderer throughout the post. The vulnerability affected the secure-payment-confirmation feature that was introduced in version 86 of Chrome, which was only in the beta version when I reported it. For the exploit and source code referenced in this post, I’ll assume version 86.0.4240.30 of Chrome. As I mistakenly assumed that Chrome on Android is 64 bit, (beta versions around v85 and v86 did come out as 64 bit, although newer versions appeared to have reverted to 32 bit), I’ll also assume a 64 bit Chrome binary in this and the next post. This makes the exploit a bit more interesting than it would have been on the 32 bit binary and the technique developed here will also be a bit more general than existing ones.
The secure-payment-confirmation is part of the Payment API and can reached by specifying supportedMethods to be secure-payment-confirmation:
var supportedInstruments = [{
supportedMethods: 'secure-payment-confirmation',
...
};
var options = {};
var request = new PaymentRequest(supportedInstruments, details, options);
var supportedInstruments = [{
supportedMethods: 'secure-payment-confirmation',
...
};
var options = {};
var request = new PaymentRequest(supportedInstruments, details, options);
The renderer will check whether the RuntimeEnabledFeatures::SecurePaymentConfirmation is enabled before proceeding. When all checks are passed, it’ll make an IPC call to the browser using the PaymentRequest mojom interface. This will invoke the PaymentRequest::Init function in the privileged browser process with the supplied data.
This call will eventually call the native JNI_PaymentAppServiceBridge_Create method, which will then call PaymentAppService::Create to create the relevant SecurePaymentConfirmationApp:
void SecurePaymentConfirmationAppFactory::Create(
base::WeakPtr<Delegate> delegate) {
...
for (const mojom::PaymentMethodDataPtr& method_data : spec->method_data()) {
if (method_data->supported_method == methods::kSecurePaymentConfirmation) {
...
std::unique_ptr<autofill::InternalAuthenticator> authenticator =
delegate->CreateInternalAuthenticator();
...
}
void SecurePaymentConfirmationAppFactory::Create(
base::WeakPtr<Delegate> delegate) {
...
for (const mojom::PaymentMethodDataPtr& method_data : spec->method_data()) {
if (method_data->supported_method == methods::kSecurePaymentConfirmation) {
...
std::unique_ptr<autofill::InternalAuthenticator> authenticator =
delegate->CreateInternalAuthenticator();
...
}
As we passed secure-payment-confirmation as the method when creating the PaymentRequest, an InternalAuthenticator will be created. In this case, it is an InternalAuthenticatorAndroid that is created:
std::unique_ptr<autofill::InternalAuthenticator>
PaymentAppServiceBridge::CreateInternalAuthenticator() const {
return std::make_unique<InternalAuthenticatorAndroid>(render_frame_host_);
}
std::unique_ptr<autofill::InternalAuthenticator>
PaymentAppServiceBridge::CreateInternalAuthenticator() const {
return std::make_unique<InternalAuthenticatorAndroid>(render_frame_host_);
}
As render_frame_host_ here is stored as a raw pointer in InternalAuthenticatorAndroid, the question is then whether InternalAuthenticatorAndroid can outlive render_frame_host_.
Now render_frame_host_ here is the RenderFrameHost that is tied to the javascript frame where the PaymentRequest is made, so by closing the frame, I can cause render_frame_host_ to be destroyed. So let’s take a look at the InternalAuthenticatorAndroid that is created:
std::unique_ptr<autofill::InternalAuthenticator> authenticator =
delegate->CreateInternalAuthenticator();
authenticator->IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
base::BindOnce(&SecurePaymentConfirmationAppFactory::
OnIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable,
weak_ptr_factory_.GetWeakPtr(), delegate,
method_data->secure_payment_confirmation.Clone(),
std::move(authenticator))); //<------- passed as argument to `OnIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable
return;
std::unique_ptr<autofill::InternalAuthenticator> authenticator =
delegate->CreateInternalAuthenticator();
authenticator->IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
base::BindOnce(&SecurePaymentConfirmationAppFactory::
OnIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable,
weak_ptr_factory_.GetWeakPtr(), delegate,
method_data->secure_payment_confirmation.Clone(),
std::move(authenticator))); //<------- passed as argument to `OnIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable
return;
The authenticator is created as a unique_ptr and is not owned by any other object. It is then passed to SecurePaymentConfirmationAppFactory::OnIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable as a callback from InternalAuthenticator::IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable. The InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable will put this callback into the is_uvpaa_callback_ field:
void InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::
IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
blink::mojom::Authenticator::
IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableCallback callback) {
...
is_uvpaa_callback_ = std::move(callback);
Java_AuthenticatorImpl_isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableBridge(
env, obj);
}
void InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::
IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
blink::mojom::Authenticator::
IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableCallback callback) {
...
is_uvpaa_callback_ = std::move(callback);
Java_AuthenticatorImpl_isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableBridge(
env, obj);
}
This then calls the isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableBridge of the AuthenticatorImpl in Java:
public void isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableBridge() {
...
isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
(isUVPAA)
-> AuthenticatorImplJni.get()
.invokeIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableResponse(
mNativeInternalAuthenticatorAndroid, isUVPAA));
}
public void isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableBridge() {
...
isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
(isUVPAA)
-> AuthenticatorImplJni.get()
.invokeIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableResponse(
mNativeInternalAuthenticatorAndroid, isUVPAA));
}
This then calls isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable and calls invokeIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableResponse in the callback, which is when is_uvpaa_callback_ is called:
void InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::
InvokeIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableResponse(
JNIEnv* env,
jboolean is_uvpaa) {
std::move(is_uvpaa_callback_).Run(static_cast<bool>(is_uvpaa));
}
void InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::
InvokeIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableResponse(
JNIEnv* env,
jboolean is_uvpaa) {
std::move(is_uvpaa_callback_).Run(static_cast<bool>(is_uvpaa));
}
As the unique_ptr of authenticator is moved to is_uvpaa_callback_, at the very least, authenticator will be kept alive until is_uvpaa_callback_ is invoked. So let’s now go back to isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable to see when the callback will get invoked:
public void isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableResponse callback) {
...
mIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableCallbackQueue.add(callback);
Fido2ApiHandler.getInstance().isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
mRenderFrameHost, this);
}
public void isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
IsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableResponse callback) {
...
mIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableCallbackQueue.add(callback);
Fido2ApiHandler.getInstance().isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable(
mRenderFrameHost, this);
}
Here isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable first adds the callback to its mIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableCallbackQueue, and then it calls isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable of the Fido2ApiHandler, which is an Android platform API. The callback in the mIsUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailableCallbackQueue gets called when a response from the Fido2ApiClient is received
From this, it appears that InternalAuthenticatorAndroid can be kept alive at least until the Android API isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable returns; and as it is an Android platform API, its return time would not be dependent on the lifetime of any RenderFrameHost in Chrome. So at least in theory, it may be possible to extend the lifetime of the InternalAuthenticatorAndroid and have the RenderFrameHost deleted before it.
The next question is how is the RenderFrameHost used by InternalAuthenticatorAndroid. It turns out that there is only a single “use” of it, which is in the destructor of InternalAuthenticatorAndroid:
InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::~InternalAuthenticatorAndroid() {
// This call exists to assert that |render_frame_host_| outlives this object.
// If this is violated, ASAN should notice.
DCHECK(render_frame_host_);
render_frame_host_->GetRoutingID();
}
InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::~InternalAuthenticatorAndroid() {
// This call exists to assert that |render_frame_host_| outlives this object.
// If this is violated, ASAN should notice.
DCHECK(render_frame_host_);
render_frame_host_->GetRoutingID();
}
and it is calling the virtual GetRoutingID. So ironically, the code that is meant for detecting memory corruption problems gave me a very certain and easy to exploit primitive. I only need to make InternalAuthenticatorAndroid to outlive render_frame_host_ and I’ll get a certain call to a virtual function, which should be very easy to exploit as a sandbox escape on Android.
In order to keep the authenticator that is created here alive for long enough, observe that its live time is dependent upon the isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable call returning. As this is a call to an Android service, it is shared by all other frames, (and in fact, all other apps), so by making a lot of calls to this service from different frames, it may be possible to cause it to slow down and buy us the time needed to delete the render_frame_host_ owned by authenticator. One possibility is to create many PaymentRequest with the secure-payment-confirmation method in the another frame, so that many calls to isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable will be made. This, unfortunately, will upset the Java garbage collector and cause an out-of-memory error most of the time, so a more lightweight way of jamming the Fido2ApiClient is needed. To achieve this, I use the PublicKeyCredential.isUserVerifyingPlatformAuthenticatorAvailable function in the Web Authentication API to achieve this. By making many calls to this function, it is possible to cause up to a few seconds of delay in the destruction of authenticator, enough to trigger the bug multiple times and replace the free’d render_frame_host_.
This method, however, would only work on phones with production images, because the WEB_AUTH feature is absent on emulator and phones with development OS build. It is fair to say that this is the case most of the time.
Another subtlety is that the render_frame_host_ cannot be deleted too soon, otherwise a null pointer dereference will crash the browser when it is used to obtain the WebContents here. However, with the big time window that I was able to create, this was not a problem at all.
Now that I am able to win the race and trigger the bug, as well as have enough time to replace the free’d render_frame_host_, it should just be a straightforward port of Cleanly Escaping the Chrome Sandbox by Tim Becker.
However, it turns out that there are a few problems.
It is well known that all Android processes are forked from the Zygote process, and so all libraries loaded in Zygote have the same base address in all Android processes. In particular, this means that many libraries have the same base addresses in both the renderer and the browser process of Chrome. So once the renderer process is compromised, the base addresses of its libraries can be used to locate gadgets in the browser process as well. This, however, only applies to libraries loaded in Zygote:
As we can see, the system library libhwui.so is loaded in the same location in both the renderer (9352) and the browser (9366) processes. The same applies to many other system libraries that are loaded in Zygote. However, as libchrome is not a library loaded in Zygote, its address is still randomized between the renderer and the browser:
So knowing the base address of libchrome.so in the renderer does not help locating gadgets inside libchrome in the browser process. As such, the gadgets in Cleanly Escaping the Chrome Sandbox, which are inside libchrome.so cannot be used and new gadgets have to be found elsewhere. That being said, it is a minor issue as there are plenty other libraries to work with and some well-known gadgets as well, such as the Execute function of libwebp (compiled into libhwui.so) that was used in the MMS Exploit by Mateusz Jurczyk (j00ru).
This is a much bigger problem. The usual heap spraying primitive, when exploiting Chrome sandbox escape, is the BlobRegistry::registerFromStream method first used in Virtually Unlimited Memory: Escaping the Chrome Sandbox
by Mark Brand. It has the advantage of being able to both write arbitrary data to fake an object and to read back the object after some function calls are made with the fake object. This is particularly useful for leaking a heap address once ASLR is (at least partially) defeated, as in the case of sandbox escape. For example, in our case, I can trigger the bug, and then replace the free’d InternalAuthenticatorAndroid with controlled data using BlobRegistry::registerFromStream and call a different virtual function of this form:
and then read the address of the field bar afterwards will give me a heap address, which can then be used for storing fake vtable to allow any function to be called.
The problem with using BlobRegistry heap spraying is that it is running on the IO thread, whereas the object I need to replace, RenderFrameHost are deleted in the UI thread. The Chrome browser process runs two threads, while most objects are created in UI thread, some IPC calls are handled by the IO thread, and BlobRegistry is one of those. This makes the BlobRegistry heap spraying rather difficult to use on Android, because the memory allocator on Android <= 10.0 is jemalloc, which is optimized for multi-threading. As part of the optimization, each thread allocates memory from a different region (arena) to minimize the need of locking. Moreover, each thread also holds a thread cache, in which newly free’d objects are placed in the thread cache and are not available to other threads. This makes it very difficult to replace the free’d RenderFrameHost with BlobRegistry heap spraying. While I was able to replace the free’d RenderFrameHost with BlobRegistry by spraying more of both RenderFrameHost and Blob objects, the reliability becomes rather poor when trying to win the race condition at the same time, because the IO thread also races with the UI thread, making the heap spraying even more unreliable.
This means a new heap spraying primitive is needed. While there are many alternatives, not many of them allows the data to be read again, which makes it difficult to leak a heap address.
On 32 bit binary, a well-known technique first introduced by Guang Gong in An exploit Chain to Remotely Root Modern Android Devices and also used later by Lucas P. in Yet another RenderFrameHostImpl UAF can be used to call system in the plt section of llvm-glnext.so with controlled argument. The idea is to replace the free’d object so that the first four bytes, which represents the pointer to the vtable, points to the correct offset in the plt section of llvm-glnext.so. Then when GetRoutingID is called, it will call system with the object itself as the argument instead. As pointers are four bytes in 32 bit binaries, the first four bytes of the argument to system will just be the pointer to the vtable, which is unlikely to contain any zero. The rest of the object can then be replaced with the actual desired argument for calling system to run arbitary commands.
For 64 bit binaries, however, pointers are 64 bit and the actual address only ocuppies 39 bits, which means that the vtable address will certainly contains zero and hence the argument to system will be terminated when using the aforementioned technique. In this post, I’ll assume 64 bit binary is used and develope the exploit to overcome this hurdle. The method works also for 32 bit binaries, though a bit overkill in that case.
Instead of using system from llvm-glnext.so directly, I’ll use the Execute gadget in the library libhwui.so mentioned earlier. As pointed out in the MMS Exploit of Mateusz Jurczyk (j00ru), the library libhwui.so contains a static g_worker_interface variable (part of the statically linked libwebp), which stores a pointer to the Exeucte function:
static void Execute(WebPWorker* const worker) {
if (worker->hook != NULL) {
worker->had_error |= !worker->hook(worker->data1, worker->data2);
}
}
static void Execute(WebPWorker* const worker) {
if (worker->hook != NULL) {
worker->had_error |= !worker->hook(worker->data1, worker->data2);
}
}
By using g_worker_interface as a fake vtable, I can create a fake RenderFrameHost object that will call Execute when the use-after-free bug triggers and its GetRoutingID function is called:
InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::~InternalAuthenticatorAndroid() {
...
//render_frame_host_ is already free'd
render_frame_host_->GetRoutingID();
}
InternalAuthenticatorAndroid::~InternalAuthenticatorAndroid() {
...
//render_frame_host_ is already free'd
render_frame_host_->GetRoutingID();
}
In this context, the free’d render_frame_host_ will be treated as a WebPWorker object worker when Execute is called, which means that by faking the fields corresponding to hook, data1 and data2, I can call an arbitrary function with arguments that I can control.
However, since data1 and data2 are both pointers, to be able to control these arguments, I still need to have a valid heap address where I can place data in. So I still need the ability to leak a heap address first.
To get an idea of some possibilities, I ran a rough, simple CodeQL query on a subset of Chrome built from the src/content/browser directory:
from Field f
where (f.getType().getName().matches("vector<unsigned%") or
f.getType().getName().matches("SkBitmap"))
select f, f.getDeclaringType(), f.getLocation()
from Field f
where (f.getType().getName().matches("vector<unsigned%") or
f.getType().getName().matches("SkBitmap"))
select f, f.getDeclaringType(), f.getLocation()
This simply looks for fields that are of type vector<unsigned int|char> etc. or SkBitmap, which are likely to hold data that I can control. In the end, I decided to use ScopedClipboardWriter. This is used by the ClipboardHost mojom for copy and pasting into the clipboard and allocates objects in the UI thread. A compromised renderer can call the methods of ClipboardHostImpl to copy and paste data to the clipboard and then read it back again. However, many of the text base methods, such as WriteText would limit the range of the input and output data to valid utf-16 characters, which limits it use. The WriteImage function, however, allows creation of arbitrary bitmap, which is good for creating fake objects. Moreover, the data can then be read back after calling the CommitWrite function that copies it to the Android clipboard (which will also delete the initial data), and then use the ReadImage function to read it back. So this would allow me to potentially leak a heap address.
There is, however, one problem with this. The Clipboard::WriteImage accepts a SkBitmap with four channels, (RGB and alpha), with data layout as follows:
So the data is grouped into pixels that consists of four bytes, with the first being the R(ed) channel, second the G(reen) channel, third the B(lue) channel, and the last the A(lpha) channel.
The SkBitmap also needs to have one of the three alphaType: kOpaque_SkAlphaType, which will cause the alpha channel to be set to 255, kPremul_SkAlphaType will first divide the alpha channel by 255 to obtain a float between 0 and 1, and then multiply the other channels data by this value, whereas kUnpremul_SkAlphaType does the opposite. This processing will take place when the bitmap is read back from the clipboard and the data that’s got written is still raw data.
So for example, if the raw data for the SkBitmap is the following:
Then with kOpaque_SkAlpha, I got this when I read from the clipboard:
With kPremul_SkAlphaType, I’ll get
and kUnpremul_SkAlphaType will give me
So I can either read the accurate RGB values and lose the Alpha value or vice versa. As we shall see later, the problem can be overcome by leaking two heap addresses that are close to each other and use bitmaps of different AlphaType to leak their addresses. By combining the leaked addresses, an accurate address can be obtained.
As explained in Calling arbitrary function above, even if I can call arbitrary (two-argument) functions, to be able to control the arguments, I still need to leak a heap address to some controlled data. To do this, I’ll use the VP8LBitWriterFinish function, which has a pointer to it stored in the plt section of libhwui.so.
By treating the plt section of libhwui.so as a gigantic “vtable” and VP8LBitWriterFinish as a “virtual function”, I can point the vtable of my fake RenderFrameHost to an offset in the plt section of libhwui.so so that when calling GetRoutingID, VP8LBitWriterFinish will be called instead.
The function VP8LBitWriterFinish will call VP8LBitWriterResize, which will allocate a new buffer depending on the size of the existing buffer and the extra_size argument:
static int VP8LBitWriterResize(VP8LBitWriter* const bw, size_t extra_size) {
uint8_t* allocated_buf;
size_t allocated_size;
const size_t max_bytes = bw->end_ - bw->buf_;
const size_t current_size = bw->cur_ - bw->buf_;
const uint64_t size_required_64b = (uint64_t)current_size + extra_size;
const size_t size_required = (size_t)size_required_64b;
if (size_required != size_required_64b) {
bw->error_ = 1;
return 0;
}
if (max_bytes > 0 && size_required <= max_bytes) return 1;
allocated_size = (3 * max_bytes) >> 1;
if (allocated_size < size_required) allocated_size = size_required;
// make allocated size multiple of 1k
allocated_size = (((allocated_size >> 10) + 1) << 10); //<------ minimal allocation size is 1k
allocated_buf = (uint8_t*)WebPSafeMalloc(1ULL, allocated_size); //<------ allocates new buffer if needed, WebPSafeMalloc simply wraps malloc
...
WebPSafeFree(bw->buf_);
bw->buf_ = allocated_buf; //<---------- stores allocated buffer as a field
bw->cur_ = bw->buf_ + current_size;
bw->end_ = bw->buf_ + allocated_size;
return 1;
}
static int VP8LBitWriterResize(VP8LBitWriter* const bw, size_t extra_size) {
uint8_t* allocated_buf;
size_t allocated_size;
const size_t max_bytes = bw->end_ - bw->buf_;
const size_t current_size = bw->cur_ - bw->buf_;
const uint64_t size_required_64b = (uint64_t)current_size + extra_size;
const size_t size_required = (size_t)size_required_64b;
if (size_required != size_required_64b) {
bw->error_ = 1;
return 0;
}
if (max_bytes > 0 && size_required <= max_bytes) return 1;
allocated_size = (3 * max_bytes) >> 1;
if (allocated_size < size_required) allocated_size = size_required;
// make allocated size multiple of 1k
allocated_size = (((allocated_size >> 10) + 1) << 10); //<------ minimal allocation size is 1k
allocated_buf = (uint8_t*)WebPSafeMalloc(1ULL, allocated_size); //<------ allocates new buffer if needed, WebPSafeMalloc simply wraps malloc
...
WebPSafeFree(bw->buf_);
bw->buf_ = allocated_buf; //<---------- stores allocated buffer as a field
bw->cur_ = bw->buf_ + current_size;
bw->end_ = bw->buf_ + allocated_size;
return 1;
}
By faking the vtable of the free’d RenderFrameHost to call VP8LBitWriterFinish, the fake RenderFrameHost will be treated as a VP8LBitWriter. If I simply leave the rest of the fake RenderFrameHost empty (zero), a buffer of size 1k will be created and a pointer to it stored as bw->buf_, which is at offset 0x08:
This not only allows us to read the address of this newly created buffer when using the ClipboardHostImpl::ReadImage function, but also gives us a large buffer that is in a relatively quiet bucket (size 1024).
Now to overcome the problem mentioned in Heap spraying with clipboard, I can first spray the size 1024 bucket using ClipboardHostImpl::WriteImage to fill out the holes, so that allocations in that bucket becomes adjacent to each other. As the bucket is not used often, this can be done with only a small amount of spraying (32 allocation seems to be sufficient). Once that is done, I remove a buffer that is allocated near the end of the heap spray. This leaves a hole in the contiguous buffers that I allocated. I then trigger the bug and replace the free’d RenderFrameHost using ClipboardHostImpl::WriteImage with a kOpaque_SkAlphaType alphaType and use the VP8LBitWriterFinish to allocate a size 1024 buffer. This is likely to fill the hole that I have created.
However, as also explained in Heap spraying with clipboard, because I’m using kOpaque_SkAlphaType as the alphaType, the byte that corresponds to the alpha channel, which is the fourth byte, will be masked by ff, as shown in the figure in the address of buf_. In order to get the full address, I now remove the buffer next to the one that is now occupied by buf_ and trigger the bug again, but this time with an alphaType kPremul_SkAlphaType. This time, the address of buf_ will have the correct fourth byte but all the others incorrect:
As the fourth byte between adjacent buffers are likely to be the same, by combining the addresses, I can get the correct address of the first buffer. This allows me to place data in guessable addresses. In fact, because buf_ is allocated by malloc, it’ll even contain the data that I used when I sprayed the 1024 size bucket.
Now that I can place data at guessable addresses, I can fully control the arguments that I use when calling functions using Execute of WebPWorker. I can simply call system of libc.so to run arbitrary shell commands, as libc.so is also one of the standard libraries that is loaded in Zygote:
This will allow me to run any shell command as the Chrome browser process.
The full exploit can be found here with some set up notes.
In this post, I’ve gone through the details of the sandbox escape in the beta version 86.0.4240.30 of Chrome and we saw that, although the usual heap spraying method that uses BlobRegistry is not applicable here, there are still other alternatives that I was able to use to put controlled data into a fake object. We also see that while the base address of Chrome is randomized between the renderer and the browser process, there are still many other gadgets that are available in the preloaded libraries in Zygote. In the end, it didn’t take a lot of effort to find appropriate gadgets in those libraries to both leak a heap address and to run arbitrary function. In particular, the one-per-boot-ASLR of Zygote remains a weakness in the Android operating system that greatly reduces the effectiveness of application sandboxing.