Bug 293485

Summary: TTY injection using TIOCSTI
Product: Base System Reporter: Wout Decré <wout>
Component: kernAssignee: freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status: New ---    
Severity: Affects Many People    
Priority: ---    
Version: 16.0-CURRENT   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   
Attachments:
Description Flags
Example to add tunable sysctl option to allow or deny TIOCSTI
none
Example to inject strings using TIOCSTI none

Description Wout Decré 2026-02-27 12:59:08 UTC
Created attachment 268398 [details]
Example to add tunable sysctl option to allow or deny TIOCSTI

On FreeBSD it is possible to do TTY injection using TIOCSTI when using tools like su(1) and jexec(8).

FreeBSD removed support for TIOCSTI briefly but added again in 328d9d2c96e2349acbc2da4efc5ad34d68a47df6.
The author thinks this is conceptually bad but is needed for tools like mail(1).  There may be other tools and shells that depend on it too.
OpenBSD completely removed support for TIOCSTI in 2017.
HardenedBSD has a toggle to disable TIOCSTI. The toggle is set to prohibit TIOCSTI by default.

I want to propose adding a tunable sysctl(8) option which allows or denies TIOCSTI. A proof of concept is attached.

Before the patch, when using jexec(8) to run a jailed command as a normal user, it is possible to inject a command which then runs as the root user on the host:

# jexec -U wout 3 /home/wout/inject whoami
whoami
# whoami
root

When I enable the new tunable, this is not permitted:

# sysctl security.bsd.allow_tiocsti=0
security.bsd.allow_tiocsti: 1 -> 0
# jexec -U wout 3 /home/wout/inject whoami
ioctl TIOCSTI failed: Operation not permitted

This might be a good candidate to add to usr.sbin/bsdinstall/scripts/hardening as well.
Comment 1 Wout Decré 2026-03-06 08:00:02 UTC
Created attachment 268566 [details]
Example to inject strings using TIOCSTI