CVE-2022-0492: cgroup v1 release_agent write check missing, root-equivalent container escape
Scope: audit · README · COMPARISON · docs/RESEARCH
CVSS 7.0 (High). Fixed around Linux 5.17-rc3. Exploited in the wild before disclosure.
Source
Relevance to doos
cgroup_release_agent_write did not check that the writer held administrative privilege
over the cgroup hierarchy, so a process inside a container (even without CAP_SYS_ADMIN
at the host level, using a user-namespace-mounted cgroupfs) could set a cgroup v1
release_agent path and get it executed with host privileges the next time the cgroup
emptied. This is a cgroup v1 feature; doos targets cgroup v2 exclusively
(src/cgroup.cpp, Cgroup::create/open build paths under the unified hierarchy only)
and, more directly, never mounts any /sys or cgroupfs into the container at all, so the
file this bug needs to write would not exist inside a doos container regardless of
kernel version.
What the check does
Attaches a container and checks /sys/fs/cgroup is absent (doos mounts no /sys inside
the container) and, if for some reason it is present, that no release_agent file exists
under it. FAIL only if a writable release_agent is actually reachable from inside.
Caveats
This verifies doos's own mount list, not the kernel: on a kernel still vulnerable to
CVE-2022-0492 but reached through some other route (a bind mount doos does not create),
this check says nothing. It is scoped to what doos attach itself can expose.
Run: make test in this directory, or make -C audit test from the repo root.