From 9df4801e0b65073cc8a9031b22a73532ef7fdc2c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@oracle.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2023 14:55:19 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] newgrp: fix potential string injection
 
Since newgrp is setuid-root, any write() system calls it does in order
to print error messages will be done as the root user.
 
Unprivileged users can get newgrp to print essentially arbitrary strings
to any open file in this way by passing those strings as argv[0] when
calling execve(). For example:
 
    $ setpid() { (exec -a $1$'\n:' newgrp '' 2>/proc/sys/kernel/ns_last_pid & wait) >/dev/null; }
    $ setpid 31000
    $ readlink /proc/self
    31001
 
This is not a vulnerability in newgrp; it is a bug in the Linux kernel.
 
However, this type of bug is not new [1] and it makes sense to try to
mitigate these types of bugs in userspace where possible.
 
[1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/476947/
 
Signed-off-by: Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@oracle.com>
 
Reference: https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/commit/9df4801e0b65073cc8a9031b22a73532ef7fdc2c
Conflict: NA
---
 src/newgrp.c | 13 ++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
 
diff --git a/src/newgrp.c b/src/newgrp.c
index babb28e9..f786a96f 100644
--- a/src/newgrp.c
+++ b/src/newgrp.c
@@ -417,10 +417,17 @@ int main (int argc, char **argv)
 	 * but we do not need to restore the previous process persona and we
 	 * don't need to re-exec anything.  -- JWP
 	 */
-	Prog = Basename (argv[0]);
+
+	/*
+	 * Ensure that "Prog" is always either "newgrp" or "sg" to avoid
+	 * injecting arbitrary strings into our stderr/stdout, as this can
+	 * be an exploit vector.
+	 */
+	is_newgrp = (strcmp (Basename (argv[0]), "newgrp") == 0);
+	Prog = is_newgrp ? "newgrp" : "sg";
+
 	shadow_logfd = stderr;
-	is_newgrp = (strcmp (Prog, "newgrp") == 0);
-	OPENLOG (is_newgrp ? "newgrp" : "sg");
+	OPENLOG (Prog);
 	argc--;
 	argv++;
 
-- 
2.27.0

