featherstark/cve-2023-21716Technical analysis and proof-of-concept exploit for CVE-2023-21716, a heap corruption vulnerability in Microsoft Word's RTF font table parser enabling remote code execution.
A vulnerability within Microsoft Office's wwlib allows attackers to achieve remote code execution with the privileges of the victim that opens a malicious RTF document. The attacker could deliver this file as an email attachment (or other means).
Microsoft Word is the word processing application included with Microsoft Office. Per a default installation, Microsoft Word handles Rich-Text Format (RTF) documents. Such documents are comprised of primarily 7-bit ASCII based keywords that together can encapsulate a wide variety of rich content.
The RTF parser in Microsoft Word contains a heap corruption vulnerability when dealing with a font table (\fonttbl) containing an excessive number of fonts (\f###). When processing fonts, the font id value (the numbers after a \f) are handled by the following code:
{% highlight asm %} 0d6cf0b6 0fbf0e movsx ecx,word ptr [esi] ; load base idx 0d6cf0b9 0fbf5602 movsx edx,word ptr [esi+2] ; load font idx 0d6cf0bd 8d1451 lea edx,[ecx+edx2] ; multiply by ~3 0d6cf0c0 668b08 mov cx,word ptr [eax] ; load the codepage value 0d6cf0c3 66894c5604 mov word ptr [esi+edx2+4],cx ; write the code page {% endhighlight %}
As shown, the font ID value is loaded by the "movsx" instruction at 0xd6cf0c3. This instruction sign extends the value loaded, thus filling the upper bits of edx with ffff. The following debugger excerpt illustrates the runtime behavior:
*** edx will become: 0x17fc8 (from 0x7fec+0x7fee*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fc9 (from 0x7fed+0x7fee*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fde (from 0x7fee+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fdf (from 0x7fef+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe0 (from 0x7ff0+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe1 (from 0x7ff1+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe2 (from 0x7ff2+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe3 (from 0x7ff3+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe4 (from 0x7ff4+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe5 (from 0x7ff5+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe6 (from 0x7ff6+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0x17fe7 (from 0x7ff7+0x7ff8*2) *** edx will become: 0xffff7ffc (from 0x7ff8+0xffff8002*2)
When this occurs, the memory write instruction at 0xd6cf0c3 corrupts the heap by writing the font code page to a negative offset of the memory held in esi. The following debugger excerpt shows the out-of-bounds memory write.
*** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35ddb4 [0xd32de20+0x17fc8*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35ddb6 [0xd32de20+0x17fc9*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35dde0 [0xd32de20+0x17fde*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35dde2 [0xd32de20+0x17fdf*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35dde4 [0xd32de20+0x17fe0*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35dde6 [0xd32de20+0x17fe1*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35dde8 [0xd32de20+0x17fe2*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35ddea [0xd32de20+0x17fe3*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35ddec [0xd32de20+0x17fe4*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35ddee [0xd32de20+0x17fe5*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35ddf0 [0xd32de20+0x17fe6*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd35ddf2 [0xd32de20+0x17fe7*2+4] *** writing 0x4e4 to 0xd31de1c [0xd32de20+0xffff7ffc*2+4]
Following this memory corruption, additional processing takes place. With a properly crafted heap layout, an attacker cause the heap corruption to yield arbitrary code execution.
Using the proof-of-concept code supplied below, processing eventually reaches the post-processing clean up code. As expected, RtlFreeHeap is called and detects heap corruption as shown below.
Critical error detected c0000374 (3ba8.21f4): WOW64 breakpoint - code 4000001f (first chance) First chance exceptions are reported before any exception handling. This exception may be expected and handled. ntdll_77a40000!RtlReportCriticalFailure+0x4b: 77b27012 cc int 3 0:000:x86> kv # ChildEBP RetAddr Args to Child 00 008f3834 77b30114 00000001 77b63990 77b2e009 ntdll_77a40000!RtlReportCriticalFailure+0x4b (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 01 008f3840 77b2e009 70dcf286 00000000 1ff78c20 ntdll_77a40000!RtlpReportHeapFailure+0x2f (FPO: [0,0,4]) 02 008f3870 77b36480 00000003 00a50000 1ff78c20 ntdll_77a40000!RtlpHpHeapHandleError+0x89 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 03 008f3888 77b2dd17 1ff78c20 0000000a 00000000 ntdll_77a40000!RtlpLogHeapFailure+0x43 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 04 008f38ec 77a83f8d 00a50258 70dcf0be 1ff78c20 ntdll_77a40000!RtlpAnalyzeHeapFailure+0x281 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 05 008f3a48 77ac7b9d 1ff78c20 1ff78c28 1ff78c28 ntdll_77a40000!RtlpFreeHeap+0x24d (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 06 008f3aa4 77a83ce6 00000000 00000000 00000000 ntdll_77a40000!RtlpFreeHeapInternal+0x783 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 07 008f3ac4 05343c06 00a50000 00000000 1ff78c28 ntdll_77a40000!RtlFreeHeap+0x46 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 08 008f3adc 06e6e330 1ff78c28 06c8dc6d 08a11040 mso20win32client!Mso::Memory::Free+0x47 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 09 008f3b0c 0430b5af 08a1104c 08a11040 08a11044 mso!MsoFreePpv+0x84 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 0a 008f3b28 0430bed0 008f9f0c 008f586c ffffffff wwlib!FreeHribl+0x8c (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 0b 008f3b70 033be323 40280000 00200002 1a772b98 wwlib!PdodCreateRtf+0x243 (FPO: [6,13,4]) 0c 008f52bc 02e465db 04012000 20280000 00200002 wwlib!``Osf::SimpleFlight::Details::SetupFlight_String'::`3'::::operator()'::`2'::`dynamic atexit destructor for 'scopes''+0x1e0966 0d 008f5600 03031155 00000000 ffffffff 00000000 wwlib!PdodCreatePfnCore+0x321 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 0e 008f5680 0301583a 00000000 ffffffff 00000000 wwlib!PdodCreatePfnBPPaapWithEdpi+0x75 (FPO: [18,3,4]) 0f 008f8c4c 030175d4 04012000 00000000 00000002 wwlib!PdodOpenFnmCore2+0xf3b (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 10 008f8d14 03c43d9b 04012000 00000000 00000002 wwlib!PdodOpenFnmCore+0xb9 (FPO: [15,30,0]) 11 008f9e40 03c43a92 00000000 00000000 00000002 wwlib!FFileOpenXszCore+0x2f6 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 12 008f9e7c 0343bd43 00000000 00000000 00000002 wwlib!FFileOpenXstzCore+0x3d (FPO: [6,4,0]) 13 008fb31c 02d17666 00000001 00000000 02d17609 wwlib!``Osf::SimpleFlight::Details::SetupFlight_String'::`3'::::operator()'::`2'::`dynamic atexit destructor for 'scopes''+0x271a8e 14 008fb554 02c594f5 71fc93df 7625f550 0000000a wwlib!Boot::IfrParseCommandLine2+0x5d (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 15 008fb5c8 02c59317 008fb5f8 02c50000 02c58ff4 wwlib!Boot::FRun+0xb4 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 16 008ff684 02c59058 96c6d88c 000800e4 71fcd0a7 wwlib!FWordBoot+0x5a (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 17 008ff6b8 00dd1917 00dd0000 00000000 0000000a wwlib!FMain+0x64 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 18 008ff908 00dd114a 00dd0000 00000000 00a54944 winword!WinMain+0x146 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 19 008ff954 7625fa29 0069a000 7625fa10 008ff9c0 winword!std::_Deallocate<8,0>+0x1e3 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 1a 008ff964 77aa7bbe 0069a000 70dc3336 00000000 KERNEL32!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x19 (FPO: [Non-Fpo]) 1b 008ff9c0 77aa7b8e ffffffff 77ac8d0f 00000000 ntdll_77a40000!__RtlUserThreadStart+0x2f (FPO: [SEH]) 1c 008ff9d0 00000000 00dd1000 0069a000 00000000 ntdll_77a40000!_RtlUserThreadStart+0x1b (FPO: [Non-Fpo])
Analysts can also use Page Heap to verify that the code attempts to write out of bounds. Doing so results in the following:
