CVE-2021-28474: SharePoint Remote Code Execution via Server-Side Control Interpretation Conflict

In May of 2021, Microsoft released a patch to correct CVE-2021-28474, a remote code execution bug in supported versions of Microsoft SharePoint Server. This bug was reported to ZDI by an anonymous researcher and is also known as ZDI-21-574. This blog takes a deeper look at the root cause of this vulnerability.

The vulnerability allows authenticated users to execute arbitrary .NET code on the server in the context of the service account of the SharePoint web application. For a successful attack, the attacker needs SPBasePermissions.ManageLists permissions for a SharePoint site. By default, authenticated SharePoint users can create sites/subsites and will have all necessary permissions.   

The Vulnerability

This problem exists due to an inconsistency between code that is used for security verification and code that is used for the actual processing of user input.

Security verification is performed by EditingPageParser.VerifyControlOnSafeList(). This function verifies that the provided input does not contain unsafe controls, meaning any control that is not marked as safe by SafeControl elements in web.config file.

The EditingPageParser.ParseStringInternal() function parses user input from dscXml and populates hashtable with information from the Register directives and hashtable2 with values from the tags of server controls. In the next step, it tries to verify each element of hashtable2 against the SafeControl elements from the web.config file. If a control is not marked there as safe, it throws an exception.

Let’s take a closer look at how values in hashtable2 are populated:

As we can see, the SharePoint server verifies only server-side controls (tags with the runat="server" attribute). This is reasonable since client-side elements do not require verification.

 If verification passes, SharePoint will process the provided markup. Let’s review the code that performs the processing:

Exploitation

For our attack, we will use the System.Web.UI.WebControls.Xml control. It allows us to retrieve information from an arbitrary XML file. We can use this to exfiltrate the machineKey section from web.config, which we allow us to forge an arbitrary ViewState and achieve remote code execution via ViewState deserialization.

We can see that System.Web.UI.WebControls.Xml is marked as unsafe via a SafeControl element in web.config:

To deliver our payload to the server, we will use the WebPartPagesWebService.ExecuteProxyUpdates web API method that is accessible via the /_vti_bin/WebPartPages.asmx endpoint. It allows us to render ASPX markup from the OuterHtml attribute in Design mode. User input will be verified by the VerifyControlOnSafeList method.

For a successful attack, we need to provide a relative path to any existing site page:

We can use information from the machinekey section from web.config to create a valid ViewState that will be deserialized by SharePoint. This allows us to run an arbitrary OS command via deserialization of untrusted data.

Proof of Concept

On the attacker side, we need any supported web browser, our PoC application for sending SOAP requests to the server, and the ysoserial.net tool. For this demonstration, we are using Firefox as our browser.

Getting Remote Code Execution

Let’s begin by visiting our SharePoint Server and authenticating as “user2”.

Let’s create a site so we will be the owner and have all permissions.

Click on “SharePoint” on the top panel:

Now click “+ Create site” link:

Choose Team Site.

Now we need to pick a name for the new site. In this case, we use ts01.

Click “Finish” and the new site will be created:

Now we need a relative path to any site page in this site. We can see list of pages by going to /SitePages/Forms/ByAuthor.aspx:

We can click on the desired page and take the relative path from the address bar (note that we omit the leading site name and “/” ) :

In our case, it is SitePages/Home.aspx.

If our attack is successful, we receive the content of web.config:

Within the file, we search for the machineKey element:

Now we need to open the source code view for this page and find the value of __VIEWSTATEGENERATOR:

In this example, it is AF878507.

We now have all the data needed to forge an arbitrary ViewState:

 __VIEWSTATEGENERATOR=AF878507

validationKey=FAB45BC67E06323C48951DA2AEAF077D8786291E2748330F03B6601F09523B79

validationAlg=HMACSHA256

We generate the ViewState using ysoserial, as follows:

Here is the resulting payload:

We need to URL-encode it and send it as the __VIEWSTATE parameter in the query string in a request to our server:

We paste this URL into the browser. The response appears as an error:

Nevertheless, when we check the C:\windows\temp folder on our target server again:

Our target file was successfully created, demonstrating that we achieved code execution. In the same way, an attacker can execute any OS command in the context of the SharePoint web application.

Conclusion

Microsoft patched this in May and assigned identifier CVE-2021-28474, with a CVSS score of 8.8. SharePoint continues to be an attractive target for researchers and attackers alike, and several SharePoint-related disclosures are currently in our Upcoming queue. Stay tuned to this blog for details about those bugs once they are disclosed.

Until then, follow the team for the latest in exploit techniques and security patches.