Vulnerabilities > CVE-2022-33986 - Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition vulnerability in Insyde Kernel
Attack vector
LOCAL Attack complexity
HIGH Privileges required
HIGH Confidentiality impact
HIGH Integrity impact
HIGH Availability impact
HIGH Summary
DMA attacks on the parameter buffer used by the VariableRuntimeDxe software SMI handler could lead to a TOCTOU attack. DMA attacks on the parameter buffer used by the software SMI handler used by the driver VariableRuntimeDxe could lead to a TOCTOU attack on the SMI handler and lead to corruption of SMRAM. This issue was discovered by Insyde engineering during a security review. This issue is fixed in Kernel 5.4: 05.44.23 and Kernel 5.5: 05.52.23. CWE-367 CWE-367 Report at: https://www.insyde.com/security-pledge/SA-2022056
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Application | 1 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Leveraging Race Conditions via Symbolic Links This attack leverages the use of symbolic links (Symlinks) in order to write to sensitive files. An attacker can create a Symlink link to a target file not otherwise accessible to her. When the privileged program tries to create a temporary file with the same name as the Symlink link, it will actually write to the target file pointed to by the attackers' Symlink link. If the attacker can insert malicious content in the temporary file she will be writing to the sensitive file by using the Symlink. The race occurs because the system checks if the temporary file exists, then creates the file. The attacker would typically create the Symlink during the interval between the check and the creation of the temporary file.
- Leveraging Time-of-Check and Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) Race Conditions This attack targets a race condition occurring between the time of check (state) for a resource and the time of use of a resource. The typical example is the file access. The attacker can leverage a file access race condition by "running the race", meaning that he would modify the resource between the first time the target program accesses the file and the time the target program uses the file. During that period of time, the attacker could do something such as replace the file and cause an escalation of privilege.