They got in via the logging! remote exploits and ddos using the security logs

So the other day I posted my pride and joy regex. You know, this one?

'^(?<host>[^ ]*) - \[(?<real_ip>)[^ ]*\] - 
(?<user>[^ ]*) \[(?<time>[^\]]*)\] 
"(?<method>\S+)(?: +(?<path>[^\"]*?)(?: +\S*)?)?" 
(?<code>[^ ]*) (?<size>[^ ]*) 
"(?<referer>[^\"]*)" "(?<agent>[^\"]*)" 
(?<request_length>[^ ]*) 
(?<request_time>[^ ]*) 
\[(?<proxy_upstream_name>[^ ]*)\] 
(?<upstream_addr>[^ ]*) 
(?<upstream_response_length>[^ ]*) 
(?<upstream_response_time>[^ ]*) 
(?<upstream_status>[^ ]*) (?<last>[^$]*)'

Seems simple, right? But, it leads to a set of questions:

  1. If we can get a ” in the path, we can do a quoting-style-escape to avoid getting logged
  2. The regex engine used in fluent-bit is onigmo. And it has some CVE. This means its conceivable that a pattern that a user can put on the wire can escape into our trusted most privileged logging container (running privileged, node filesystem mounted, etc)
  3. DDoS. We log a lot. But the logs are often bigger than the thing they are logging.

For #3, consider this. Its a connection log from istio. Yes you read that right, a TCP SYN( ~64 bytes) creates this in JSON of 816 bytes:

{“level”:”info”,”time”:”2018-09-17T20:12:59.912982Z”,”instance”:”tcpaccesslog.logentry.istio-system”,”connectionDuration”:”12.740646ms”,”connectionEvent”:”close”,”connection_security_policy”:”none”,”destinationApp”:””,”destinationIp”:”10.244.1.57″,”destinationName”:”payment-6cdc5b656-fkhxh”,”destinationNamespace”:”socks”,”destinationOwner”:”kubernetes://apis/extensions/v1beta1/namespaces/socks/deployments/payment”,”destinationPrincipal”:””,”destinationServiceHost”:””,”destinationWorkload”:”payment”,”protocol”:”tcp”,”receivedBytes”:117,”reporter”:”destination”,”requestedServerName”:””,”sentBytes”:240,”sourceApp”:””,”sourceIp”:”10.244.1.1″,”sourceName”:”unknown”,”sourceNamespace”:”default”,”sourceOwner”:”unknown”,”sourcePrincipal”:””,”sourceWorkload”:”unknown”,”totalReceivedBytes”:117,”totalSentBytes”:240}

Hmm, so you are seeing where I am going. You remember a few years ago where we found that NTP could be asked its upstream list? So a small packet would create a large response? And, being UDP, could be spoofed, so the response could go to someone else? Making it a great DDoS source.

Well, my log. Your SYN costs me a lot more to receive than it costs you to send. Think of all the mechanisms below that (elasticsearch, fluent-bit, kibana, storage, network, cpu, ram, …).

Hmm.

Now about #2. That is a bit of a trouble point. Who wants to find that the regex that is parsing the field that any user can send you via netcat is itself prone to a crash, or remote escape? Not me.


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2 Responses to “They got in via the logging! remote exploits and ddos using the security logs”

  1. Jesse Ariss

    TCPCT! It will help avoid resource exhaustion on server-side by not allocating any resources until the completion of the handshake AND allows the server to release memory immediately after the connection closes. So just do that.

    Also post more bike pictures.

    1. db

      I’ve used tcp syncookies in the past. the issue here is actually it connects, the big json log has url etc in it. so its not just the syn.

      i posted another bike post for you 🙂 Come and try it sometime.

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