php / php/php-src

Heap hardening

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Feature Status: Needs Triage
Dominant language
C
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Description

Description

Currently, PHP's heap implementation is ~trivial to exploit:

There are several hardening techniques that could/should be implemented, listed here in order of difficulty:

  • prevent unlink abuses:
    • #13943
    • #14339
  • prevent freelist-corruption via shadow-pointer à la XNU/linux/partitionAlloc/suhosin/…: #14054
  • Disable ZEND_MM_CUSTOM by default: #14570
  • Make some parts of _zend_mm_heap read-only at runtime: #14570
  • surround large allocations with guard-pages, as done in partitionAlloc, scudo, …
  • Freelist randomisation, see Linux' SLAB_FREELIST_RANDOM
  • isolate types in different heaps to make type confusion/use after free more difficult, as in kalloc_type. An additional benefit of type isolation + freelist bitmap is that we wouldn't need the object_store anymore to enumerate objects. A less invasive approach would be to simply isolate by size as done in partitionAlloc and Webkit's libpas
    • once this is done, heaps need to be pinned by size/type, to prevent an attacker from re-using the memory space of a destructed heap with one of different type/size.
    • a low-hanging fruit would be to allocate GET/POST/COOKIES into a separated heap, to reduce the reach of heap feng-shui: #14304
  • allocate strings and array buckets in GigaCages so that a corrupt length doesn't allow to access anything else than other strings/array buckets. This will significantly increase the virtual-memory usage though. this isn't doable since those structures have a maximum size of SIZE_MAX

cc @arnaud-lb @cfreal @therealcoiffeur

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Research direction

The issue is a broad PHP heap-hardening plan rather than a single file or test change. Start by reviewing the unchecked techniques and the referenced issues and allocator designs, then choose a specific scope with the maintainers. Done would require an agreed hardening technique to be implemented and validated in the relevant PHP allocator tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c, php
Domain
security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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