Bug 1918179 (CVE-2021-3178)

Summary:	CVE-2021-3178 kernel: path traversal in fs/nfsd/nfs3xdr.c may lead to Information Disclosure or RCE
Product:	[Other] Security Response	Reporter:	Marian Rehak <mrehak>
Component:	vulnerability	Assignee:	Nobody <nobody>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified	CC:	acaringi, adscvr, airlied, alciregi, bhu, blc, bmasney, chwhite, dramseur, dvlasenk, hdegoede, hkrzesin, itamar, jarodwilson, jeremy, jforbes, jlelli, jonathan, josef, jshortt, jstancek, jwboyer, kcarcia, kernel-maint, kernel-mgr, lgoncalv, masami256, mchehab, mlangsdo, nmurray, ptalbert, qzhao, rvrbovsk, steved, walters, williams
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:	A flaw leak of the file handle for parent directory in the Linux kernel's NFS3 functionality was found in the way user calls READDIRPLUS. A local user could use this flaw to traverse to other parts of the file-system than mounted sub-folder.	Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:		Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:	1918181, 1920068, 1920069, 1920433, 1920434, 1925957
Bug Blocks:	1918182

Description Marian Rehak 2021-01-20 08:53:37 UTC

fs/nfsd/nfs3xdr.c in the Linux kernel through 5.10.8, when there is an NFS export of a subdirectory of a filesystem, allows remote attackers to traverse to other parts of the filesystem via READDIRPLUS.

Reference:

https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-nfs/patch/20210111210129.GA11652@fieldses.org/

Comment 1 Marian Rehak 2021-01-20 08:54:21 UTC

Created kernel tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1918181]

Comment 4 Alex 2021-01-20 19:10:13 UTC

Mitigation:

When export subdirectory of a filesystem, enable subtree_check option of the NFS server for preventing possibility of accessing outside of this export.

Comment 10 Petr Matousek 2021-02-04 12:52:25 UTC

Statement:

This flaw is rated as having Moderate impact because of the attack limitation: the user can gain more access than expected only inside NFS root mount point if already have permissions for the access to this NFS sub-folder.

Also this is a known limitation of NFSv3 and there is a known and documented configuration option to avoid this. As such, this is more of an hardening rather than security issue.