Files
orca/src/main/ssh/ssh-remote-powershell.ts
OrcaWinandOrca Worker cff202c16a fix(windows): drop EDR-flagged -ExecutionPolicy Bypass from encoded PowerShell (#17880)
* fix(windows): drop EDR-flagged -ExecutionPolicy Bypass from encoded PowerShell

MDE flags `-ExecutionPolicy Bypass` paired with base64 `-EncodedCommand` as a
behavioural signal. Measured on Windows 11: neither `-Command` nor
`-EncodedCommand` is execution-policy gated (both run under an explicit
`-ExecutionPolicy Restricted` and `AllSigned`; only `-File` fails), so the
switch was a pure no-op on every one of these command lines.

Removes the switch from all four sites that spelled it, and de-encodes the one
site whose payload never passes through a re-parsing shell:

- ssh-remote-powershell: one chokepoint for ~40 remote-Windows call sites.
  Base64 kept — the remote sshd DefaultShell re-parses this string.
- setup-agent-sequencing / windows-cmd-runner-delayed-launch: base64 kept —
  these strings are typed into a terminal pane.
- windows-interactive-login-spawn: base64 kept — `cmd.exe /c start` re-parses,
  and the cmd-safe-token guard rejects the `&` and `"` in the raw relay script.
- windows-mobile-firewall local runner: `-EncodedCommand` -> `-Command`, since
  execFile reaches CreateProcess with no shell in between.

The setup startup gate keeps execution-policy relief in-payload (process scope),
because it evals a user-authored startup command that may invoke a `.ps1`, and a
`.ps1` IS gated. Caught by the real-process suite; mirrors the agent-hooks
launcher's trade.

The elevated firewall child deliberately stays encoded: `Start-Process
-ArgumentList` joins its array into one ShellExecuteEx string without quoting
and PowerShell re-splits on whitespace, measured to collapse `C:\My  App\...`
to `C:\My App\...` — a firewall rule for the wrong program.

* test(ssh): enforce the no-script-file invariant remote payloads rely on

Dropping `-ExecutionPolicy Bypass` from `powerShellCommand` is a no-op only
while no remote payload loads a PowerShell script file — execution policy has
never gated anything else. That invariant held by inspection and was guarded by
nothing, so a future payload that dot-sourced, used `-File`, or imported a
`.psm1` would break only on a remote host with a Restricted/AllSigned
LocalMachine policy and no GPO: a failure on someone else's machine.

States the invariant at the wrapper, and adds a ratchet that scans every module
importing it for `.ps1`/`.psm1`, `Import-Module`, `-File`, and dot-sourcing.
The scan discovers importers itself (13 today) so new ones are covered, and
asserts it found some, so an emptied list cannot pass vacuously.

Mutation-checked: injecting each construct into a real importer fails the
matching case and names the file. The first dot-source pattern passed a
`;`-prefixed sample but missed `powerShellCommand(". '$x'")` — the likelier
shape — so the pattern now accepts a string-literal start and the self-test
samples carry their surrounding quotes.

* test(ssh): close two blind spots in the remote-payload ratchet

Both found by independent mutation testing of the ratchet itself, and both let
a real violation pass while the guard reported green.

`-File` was matched case-sensitively, so `-file $scriptVar` slipped through —
PowerShell switches are case-insensitive, and with a variable path the `.ps1`
pattern does not cover for it, so that shape escaped both nets. The naive fix
is wrong: bare /-File\b/i matches `--credential-file`, `--log-file` and
`--body-file`, which occur in three of these importers. Anchoring to a token
boundary catches the lowercase, odd-spacing and argv-element forms with zero
offenders across all 14.

Comment stripping paired a `/*` appearing inside a string (a glob such as
'src/*.ts') with any later comment close and deleted everything between, hiding
violations in the gap. Anchoring the block strip to line start, as the `//`
strip already was, fixes it — verified by injecting an `Import-Module` after a
glob string: the unanchored form misses it, the anchored form catches it.

Extends the same case-insensitivity to `.ps1`/`.psm1` and `Import-Module`,
which had the identical flaw (`import-module`, `DEPLOY.PS1` are legitimate
spellings); measured to add no false positive.

Each construct now carries the fixtures it must catch AND the near-misses it
must not, so a future tightening cannot quietly trade one for the other — the
negative fixtures are what would have caught the naive `-File` fix. Non-vacuity
bound tightened to >10 against 14 importers.

* docs(ssh): state what the remote-payload ratchet cannot see

The scan matches source text, so a script file reached only through a variable
(`& $scriptPath`) never appears in source and no pattern can catch it. The
ratchet narrows the hole; the invariant note on `powerShellCommand` covers the
remainder.

Recorded because a guard that reads as complete coverage when it is not is
worse than one that states its edge: the next author trusts it further than it
deserves, and should learn this limit from the test rather than an incident.

* test(ssh): scan remote payloads with the shared source walk

The ratchet had its own tree walk and comment stripper. The walk skipped
neither node_modules/dist/.git nor dot-directories and excluded tests by
`.test.ts` alone, so its importer count -- the guard's own goalpost -- could
be wrong about what it scanned. The stripper was anchored to line start to
dodge a `/*` inside a glob string, which silently skipped trailing comments;
`stripComments` tracks quote state and handles both.

Importer set re-derived against the shared walk: 15, floor unchanged at 10.

* fix(setup): report a failed execution-policy relief instead of swallowing it

The in-payload Set-ExecutionPolicy carried -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue and
an empty catch, so any failure vanished. A Windows PowerShell 5.1 install with
duplicate extended type data fails every cmdlet in Microsoft.PowerShell.Security
-- autoload, not policy -- and the user then saw only their own .ps1 being
refused, with no trace that the relief had been attempted or why.

-ErrorAction Stop is what routes a non-terminating failure into the catch at
all; the catch reports the FullyQualifiedErrorId to stderr and deliberately
does not rethrow, so a broken policy cmdlet cannot take down the startup this
gate exists to run. Success path is unchanged and stays stderr-clean.

Verified by execution on a clean child environment: success -> policy=Bypass,
stderr empty; shadowed failing cmdlet -> diagnostic on stderr and the gate
still continues; the old empty catch -> silent.

---------

Co-authored-by: Orca Worker <orca-worker@localhost>
2026-09-05 21:12:40 -07:00

91 lines
4.9 KiB
TypeScript

import { gunzipSync, gzipSync } from 'node:zlib'
import { encodePowerShellCommand } from '../../shared/powershell-command-encoding'
import { CMD_EXE_COMMAND_LINE_MAX_CHARS } from '../providers/windows-shell-args'
export {
quotePowerShellLiteral as powerShellLiteral,
quotePowerShellNativeArgument as powerShellNativeArg
} from '../../shared/powershell-native-argument'
// Why cmd.exe and not the 32767 CreateProcess cap: Windows OpenSSH runs every exec request
// through sshd's DefaultShell, cmd.exe on a stock install. Budget under cmd.exe's own ceiling
// to leave room for the `/c` wrapper sshd adds before cmd.exe counts the line.
const WINDOWS_REMOTE_COMMAND_LINE_BUDGET_CHARS = 8_000
/**
* `pwsh.exe` is PowerShell 7. It is not present on a stock Windows install, so it is only ever
* chosen after a probe — but where it exists it reads a redirected stdin correctly, which Windows
* PowerShell 5.1 does not (see `system-ssh-file-binary-transfer.ts`).
*/
export type WindowsPowerShellExecutable = 'powershell.exe' | 'pwsh.exe'
// Why: `-EncodedCommand` is not execution-policy gated (only `-File` is), so `-ExecutionPolicy
// Bypass` was a no-op here — and it is one of the most heavily EDR-flagged PowerShell tokens.
// The base64 stays: this string is re-parsed by the remote host's default SSH shell, which may
// be cmd.exe, PowerShell, or bash.
//
// INVARIANT — no remote payload may load a PowerShell *script file*.
//
// Execution policy has only ever gated loading script files (2.0 through 7.x). Inline
// statements, `& some.exe` and `Add-Type -TypeDefinition` are never gated, which is what makes
// dropping the switch a no-op for every payload we send today — the compressed path below stays
// inline too, since `Invoke-Expression` on a decompressed string loads no file. Loading a script
// file is the one thing the dropped switch actually covered, so a payload that dot-sources, runs
// `& '<x>.ps1'`, calls `Import-Module '<x>.psm1'`, or passes `-File` would silently fail on a
// remote host whose LocalMachine policy is Restricted/AllSigned with no GPO — a break that
// surfaces on someone else's machine, not ours.
//
// If you ever need one, do NOT restore the command-line switch (it loses to a GPO scope anyway,
// so it never covered the locked-down case): set the policy in-payload at process scope, the way
// `buildWindowsStartupCommand` in src/shared/setup-agent-sequencing.ts does.
//
// Enforced by the ratchet in ssh-remote-powershell.test.ts, which scans every importer.
export function powerShellCommand(
script: string,
executable: WindowsPowerShellExecutable = 'powershell.exe'
): string {
const inline = encodedPowerShellCommand(script, executable)
if (inline.length <= WINDOWS_REMOTE_COMMAND_LINE_BUDGET_CHARS) {
return inline
}
// Why: these scripts are repetitive enough that gzip beats the UTF-16LE tax by
// ~4x, which is the difference between a line cmd.exe runs and one it refuses.
const compressed = encodedPowerShellCommand(selfExtractingPowerShellScript(script), executable)
if (compressed.length > WINDOWS_REMOTE_COMMAND_LINE_BUDGET_CHARS) {
throw new Error(
`Remote Windows command needs ${compressed.length} characters; Orca budgets ${WINDOWS_REMOTE_COMMAND_LINE_BUDGET_CHARS} for a line sshd hands to cmd.exe, which itself refuses more than ${CMD_EXE_COMMAND_LINE_MAX_CHARS}.`
)
}
return compressed
}
function encodedPowerShellCommand(script: string, executable: WindowsPowerShellExecutable): string {
return `${executable} -NoProfile -NonInteractive -EncodedCommand ${encodePowerShellCommand(script)}`
}
/** Orca-prefixed names so the payload can never shadow the bootstrap's own state. */
function selfExtractingPowerShellScript(script: string): string {
const payload = gzipSync(Buffer.from(script, 'utf-8'), { level: 9 }).toString('base64')
return [
`$OrcaScriptBytes = [Convert]::FromBase64String('${payload}')`,
'$OrcaScriptMemory = New-Object System.IO.MemoryStream -ArgumentList (,$OrcaScriptBytes)',
'$OrcaScriptGzip = New-Object System.IO.Compression.GZipStream -ArgumentList $OrcaScriptMemory, ([System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode]::Decompress)',
'$OrcaScriptReader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader -ArgumentList $OrcaScriptGzip, ([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8)',
'$OrcaScriptText = $OrcaScriptReader.ReadToEnd()',
'$OrcaScriptReader.Dispose()',
'Invoke-Expression $OrcaScriptText'
].join('\n')
}
/** Inverse of `powerShellCommand`: the script the host will actually run. */
export function decodeRemotePowerShellScript(command: string): string {
const encoded = command.match(/-EncodedCommand\s+([A-Za-z0-9+/=]+)/u)?.[1]
if (!encoded) {
return command
}
const script = Buffer.from(encoded, 'base64').toString('utf16le')
const payload = script.match(
/^\$OrcaScriptBytes = \[Convert\]::FromBase64String\('([A-Za-z0-9+/=]+)'\)/u
)?.[1]
return payload ? gunzipSync(Buffer.from(payload, 'base64')).toString('utf-8') : script
}