FreeBSD Intel SYSRET Privilege Escalation
Posted on 07 March 2019
This Metasploit module exploits a vulnerability in the FreeBSD kernel, when running on 64-bit Intel processors. By design, 64-bit processors following the X86-64 specification will trigger a general protection fault (GPF) when executing a SYSRET instruction with a non-canonical address in the RCX register. However, Intel processors check for a non-canonical address prior to dropping privileges, causing a GPF in privileged mode. As a result, the current userland RSP stack pointer is restored and executed, resulting in privileged code execution.
