rdaradar (RDA Radar)

Sanity check R data files before use.

Why?

“Researchers” from HiddenLayer took advantage of the hype cycle before RSAC 2024 to broadcast a non-vulnerability in R.

They (IMO) inappropriately received a CVE assignment (CVE-2024-27322) for, what is, expected behavior in the deserialization of R objects via standard mechanisms. I am not shocked as I am also of the opinion that the current state of “CVE” in general is “busted”.

There is no mention of this CVE in the release of R 4.4.0 which did modify the behavior of deserializing certain objects within R data files. I am going to make an assumption the change was made because of this CVE.

However, the “weakness” is by no means closed.

Konrad Rudolph and Iakov Davydov did some ace cyber sleuthing and figured out other ways R data file deserialization can be abused. Please take a moment and drop a note on Mastodon to them saying “thank you”. This is excellent work. We need more folks like them in this ecosystem.

Please note that this is all expected behavior. R has many “defaults” that can get one into trouble. Seven years ago I made this example repo/package to demonstrate some of the more overt “gotchas” that can lead to potential unwanted behavior. Back in 2019, the fine folks at rOpenSci also let us poke at making R a bit safer.

I’m including one of their sample “calc” exploit payloads since hiding it really doesn’t do much to determined attackers.

When you load() an R data file directly into your R session into the global environment, the object will, well, load there. So, if it has an object named print that’s going to be in your global environment and get called when print() gets called. Lather/rinse/repeat for any other object name. It should be pretty obvious how this could be abused.

A tad more insidious is what happens when you quit R. By default, on quit(), unless you specify otherwise, that function invocation will also call .Last() if it exists in the environment. This functionality exists in the event things need to be cleaned up. One “nice” aspect of .-prefixed R objects is that they’re hidden by default from the environment. So, you may not even notice if an R data file you’ve loaded has that defined. (You likely do not check what’s loaded anyway.)

It’s also possible to create custom R objects that have their own “finalizers” (ref reg.finalizer), which will also get called by default when the objects are being destroyed on quit.

There are also likely other ways to trigger unwanted behavior.

If you want to see how this works, start R from RStudio, the command line, or R GUI. Then, load exploit.rda. Then, quit R/RStudio/R GUI (this will be less dramatic on linux, but the demo should still be effective).

The main takeaway from this is DO NOT LOAD ANY R DATA FILES YOU DID NOT CREATE OR TRUST THE PROVENANCE OF.

If you must take in untrusted R data files, keep reading.

What (Does This Do)?

You can either run the check.R script directly or via the Docker container version of it. It will load the specified R data file into a “quarantined” environment, then list out the objects in the environment, compare them to known, potentially dangerous ones, and also print out the contents of any functions defined.

It will exit with a status code of 1 if anything dangerous is found.

It’s a work-in-progress (I’m really short on time this week), and filing issues with suggestions for improvement (then, PRs) would be most welcome.

Usage: Bare Script (POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS)

$ Rscript check.R /path/to/RDATAFILE

Example output for the exploit.rda file:

-----------------------------------------------
Loading R data file in quarantined environment…
-----------------------------------------------

Loading objects:
  .Last
  quit

-----------------------------------------
Enumerating objects in loaded R data file
-----------------------------------------

.Last : function (...)  
 - attr(*, "srcref")= 'srcref' int [1:8] 1 13 6 1 13 1 1 6
  ..- attr(*, "srcfile")=Classes 'srcfilecopy', 'srcfile' <environment: 0x12cb25f48> 
quit : function (...)  
 - attr(*, "srcref")= 'srcref' int [1:8] 1 13 6 1 13 1 1 6
  ..- attr(*, "srcfile")=Classes 'srcfilecopy', 'srcfile' <environment: 0x12cb25f48> 

------------------------------------
Functions found: enumerating sources
------------------------------------

Checking `.Last`…

!! `.Last` may execute arbitrary code on your system under certain conditions !!

`.Last` source:
{
    cmd = if (.Platform$OS.type == "windows") 
        "calc.exe"
    else if (grepl("^darwin", version$os)) 
        "open -a Calculator.app"
    else "echo pwned\\!"
    system(cmd)
}


Checking `quit`…

!! `quit` may execute arbitrary code on your system under certain conditions !!

`quit` source:
{
    cmd = if (.Platform$OS.type == "windows") 
        "calc.exe"
    else if (grepl("^darwin", version$os)) 
        "open -a Calculator.app"
    else "echo pwned\\!"
    system(cmd)
}

While this should theoretically be “safe”, it is much safer to run this in a Docker container.

Usage: Docker

Build:

$ docker build -t rdaradar:0.1.0 -t rdaradar:latest .

Run:

$ docker run --rm -v "$(pwd)/exploit.rda:/unsafe.rda" rdaradar