Do not trust Chinese routers, especially D-LINK – As they contain backdoor!

A group of researchers found a backdoor in a set of D-LINK routers. Well, not a news but expected and good to be uncovered. Does it call for a deeper inspection of other brand routers? Better of with the open firmware like DD-WRT or OpenWRT or TOMATO! At least you know what you are loading on to the device.

The discovered backdoor can bypass the authentication step and land directly to the admin interface!

Pretty nifty isn’t? That’s what a backdoor is for.

Method to access: Just change the User Agent string of your browser to “xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide” which is actually a reverse of “editby04882joelbackdoor_teslmx”.

Nice huh?

“edit by 04882 joel backdoor _teslmx”

One of the very few backdoors which actually spelt backdoor! :)

How to change the User Agent? It is very simple for non-IE browsers. Check in the configuration settings for Agent by typing about:config in the address bar.

If there is an option, you could change it and restart the browser for the new string to take effect. To check if it changes, use Netcat, start a listener on the local interface using “nc –vvns 127.0.0.1 –Lp 888” at the DOS prompt and type “http://localhost:888” and you can see the request on the command prompt window. You can check the User Agent string value and see if it has been changed according to the above setting.

Else check for some plug-in which can be used to change the User Agent string of the browser to what you want text!

More info about the backdoor and affected devices from http://www.devttys0.com/2013/10/reverse-engineering-a-d-link-backdoor/

More and more of such news is actually taking away the trust on device manufacturer whether they are Chinese or not!

Well, like wise Intel who have a embedded SIM enabled on the processor for remote access, software manufacturers having hidden backdoors, etc,.

It is nice to see some researchers burning mid night oil to uncover snake oil products (what else to call ‘em?) and legitimate products which such nonsensical backdoors. But when it comes to hardware it is pretty much out of reach for any one to have a look at it to understand what it does when a specially crafter instruction / packet or a command is sent. It is actually scary to know what lies between the multi layered PCBs and components and what they are capable of. One could still argue, being a layman we might not have to worry about such things because of the information value we hold, but think about a top secret facility or a government or some one having a high value research data, it is pretty scary on what to trust. Ultimately, mate, anything electrical / electronical should not be trusted. No matter if it is a connected or disconnected device, powered on or in off state. Just don’t trust it!

I may be paranoid, but it goes with the saying of you know who:

“A computer switched off, unplugged, buried under ground in an unknown location on earth cannot remain safe! Then how our devices can be???”

And I don’t want to open another can of worms with the recent PRISM happenings as some things are better left not discussed. Beware!! it is not being promiscuous!! But just like that! Many more to go before the EOW!

Diving into windows registry for forensic data

As a forensic examiner, looking at a cloned system for possible timestamps of a drive-by-download attack, windows registry has some small foot holes to gather evidence (real or not). Atleast, will surely give an idea about how, when the attack has happened. Trusting the system time was intact and all the sole purpose for this exercise was to learn, having a look at registry keys armed with some freeware tools provide some data. Correlation plays a key role in identifying how and when the devices were connected to the system.

Freeware tools used to achieve the above are:
USB Device Viewer - A tool which provides a complete history of all removable devices connected to a Windows based host.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usbdeview.zip

Direct Registry Browser from
http://www.sysdevsoftware.com/soft/dreg.php which can be used to browse the registry in case of offline image based forensic analysis.

Registry Browser from SoftSpot Software.
http://www.softspotsoftware.com/pages/downloads/RegBrowser.zip which can be used to view the timestamps on the registry key. There is a Nirsoft tool to view the same, but I prefer using this software.

And lastly, the infamous ProcMon from Microsoft Sysinternals Lab.
The latest version can be downloaded from http://live.sysinternals.com/Procmon.exe
It can used to get knowledge about the registry keys being accessed during the use of the above tools.
Tip: Set a filter on the process names to reduce the output while using the above tools.

The rest is left as an exercise to the readers (??!!!) as how find out the usb devices connection time and et all!

Happy forensics!

Truecrypt 7.0 gets Hardware Acceleration and more

Truecrypt - The free open source encryption tool which gives many commercial encryption tool providers to run for their money has once again proved it's worthiness! Just released Version 7.0 has got some really commendable features such as Hardware-accelerated AES, Auto Mounting of the encrypted volumes and partition/device-hosted volumes to utilise different sectors sizes. Though hardware-accelerated AES is currently applicable only for Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i7 processors, it is worthwhile to enable it because it provides up to 4-8 times faster performance compared to the normal open source version of the AES implementation.
It uses the embedded AES-NI (aka "AES New Instructions") instruction set for performing the crypto operations, but it is clear that the key generation does not use the AES-NI Instructions. (Thank god! :))
Check out more from http://www.truecrypt.org/
Use this amazing tool to safe guard your data be it confidential or not! You'll agree with me if you have the habit of carrying your portable Operating systems, Tools sets, Working data and Documents on multiple USB thumb drives wherever you go/roam! :)

Metasploit 3.4.1 Released!

Metasploit - One of the most widely used penetration testing framework has released the Version 3.4.1 with adding 16 exploits, 22 auxiliary modules, and 11 meterpreter scripts. All 587 exploit modules have been updated to include the Disclosure Date field. Major features added since 3.4.0 include the RAILGUN meterpreter extension by Patrick HVE and the PHP Meterpreter payload by egypt. The Windows installer now ships with support for PostgreSQL database backends.

Get it from: http://www.metasploit.com/

v3.4.1 Release notes (copied from the above site):

Statistics

• Metasploit now has 567 exploits and 283 auxiliary modules (up from 551 and 261 in v3.4)
• Over 40 community reported bugs were fixed and numerous interfaces were improved

General

• The Windows installer now ships with a working Postgres connector
• New session notifications now always print a timestamp regardless of the TimestampOutput setting
• Addition of the auxiliary/scanner/discovery/udp_probe module, which works through Meterpreter pivoting
• HTTP client library is now more reliable when dealing with broken/embedded web servers
• Improvements to the database import code, covering NeXpose, Nessus, Qualys, and Metasploit Express
• The msfconsole "connect" command can now speak UDP (specify the -u flag)
• Nearly all exploit modules now have a DisclosureDate field
• HTTP fingerprinting routines added to some exploit modules
• The psexec module can now run native x64 payloads on x64 based Windows systems
• A development style guide has been added in the HACKING file in the SVN root
• FTP authentication bruteforce modules added

Payloads

•  Some Meterpreter scripts (notably persistence and getgui) now create a resource file to undo the changes made to the target system.
• Meterpreter scripts that create logs and download files now save their data in the ~.msf3/logs/scripts folder.
• New Meterpreter Scripts:
• enum_firefox - Enumerates Firefox data like history, bookmarks, form history, typed URLs, cookies and downloads databases.
• arp_scanner - Script for performing ARP scan for a given CIDR.
• enum_vmware - Enumerates VMware producst and their configuration.
• enum_powershell - Enumerates powershell version, execution policy, profile and installed modules.
• enum_putty - Enumerates recent and saved connections.
• get_filezilla_creds - Enumerates recent and saved connections and extracts saved credentials.
• enum_logged_on_users - Enumerate past users that logged in to the system and current connected users.
• get_env - Extracts all user and system environment variables.
• get_application_lits - Enumerates installed applications and their version.
• autoroute - Sets a route from within a Meterpreter session without the need to background the sessions.
• panda_2007_pavsrv53 - Panda 2007 privilege escalation exploit.
• Support for a dns bypass list added to auxiliary/server/fakedns. It allows the user to specify which domains to resolve externally while returning forged records for everything else. Thanks to Rudy Ruiz for the patch.
• Railgun - The Meterpreter "RAILGUN" extension by Patrick HVE has merged and is now available for scripts.
• PHP Meterpreter - A protocol-compatible port of the original Meterpreter payload to PHP. This new payload adds the ability to pivot through webservers regardless of the native operating system
• Token impersonation now works with "execute -t" to spawn new commands with a stolen token.

Known Issues

•  Interacting with a meterpreter session during a migration will break the session. See #1360.
• There is no simple way to interrupt a background script started by AutoRunScript
• Command interaction on Windows causes a PHP Meterpreter session to die. See #2232 
• 
  

Google's SSL Search Compromises security

Well, Well, Well! Google's SSL search compromises the user's desktop security to a large extent.

When a user searches using google, user's local desktop security applications such as McAfee's Site Protector or such similar suites will not have any clue on the content of the results. And the links cannot be verified for genuine and security. This is applicable for all such applications and it can be overridden as the applications are local, but would McAfee care to release an updated version to the existing suite? And all other applications which provides link security would really care to release an update? If at all it can be overridden. ( I have not done any research on IE8 to validate the claim if it can be overridden, but on older versions of IE, it can be.)

So, if a malicious site is returned by Google, (Well, Google is not too good in site classification / user protection. Are they? :)), the user is at risk of getting the infection. In case of any 0-day exploits getting a chance to infect the user's system via Google's "secure" search results, the user is doomed. For what? Using the Google's secure search?

I can clearly visualise the long term monopoly google is going to have on everything that is connected! :D

Do you?

Goggle's introduction of SSL to search has been a deliberate move to curb third party access it contents. Though they can talk about privacy issues, sniffing, blah blah blah, any one who relied on the referrer information is doomed when the site gets redirected. Any non-google analytics will not have any data on the referrer/search terms which the user has used to get to the site.

As long as you stay with google, you will have access to a wealth of information. But once you are out of it, there might practically be nothing!

A recent comment from one of the netizen, I thought it is nice to be quoted here! :D

"GOOGLE IS NOT BE TRUSTED, INVESTIGATIONS IN THE USA STATES GOOGLE IS PURCHASING KNOWLEDGE , BOOKS , ETC. COPYRIGHTS . WITH A VIEW OF HAVING FUTURE GENERATIONS TO ACCESS OF ANY COPY RIGHT MATERIAL. WHICH MEANS A PRICE WILL BE PLACED ON KNOWLEDGE.???
STUDENTS, RESEARCHERS , IF FACT ALL WILL HAVE PAY FOR ACCESS.
MEAN WHILE GOOGLE IS SELLING EMAIL ADDRESSES, PLUS ANY INFORMATION RECEIVED. HOME LAND SECURITY AND OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ARE INVESTIGATING. ZERO CONCLUSIONS WILL BE REACHED , DUE TO THE ENORMOUS SUMS GOOGLE GIVES TO POLITICAL PARTIES AND LOBBYISTS."

I do not make any claim or support of the above quoted, bold comments as it is not mine, but forewarned, the above is true and already in the making.

Thought for time?

Private file sharing with SSL Tunneling - Part 1

How of us want to share information across multiple computers which are miles apart?

For example, to transfer some stuff from home computer into work computer or from work laptop to home computer or from home computer to mom's computer?

While there have been multiple simple ways to do it by creating a FTP server or even a SFTP server or any other file server technology where the files can be uploaded and downloaded, the following method is virtually limitless in terms of it's offering.

It can be used to access the system remotely, access the file system and everything else. It is more likely to be used across the systems that is managed by a single user, but physically at different locations. Yet there is not dependency on any third party remote control applications like Logmein etc and is definitely has its own merits and demerits.

This article will be spread across multiple posts.

Following are some of the pre-requisites:

One free dynamic dns account for creating host dns records.
Preferably a direct Internet connection. (Broadband connection with a addressable public ip address is sufficient as long as the router can be configured for port forwarding)
A computer (just kidding! :))
SSL Tunnel from http://www.stunnel.org/
Open SSL from http://www.openssl.org/
Any of the free VNC Servers
Any of the free FTP Servers
Any of the free File Serving Applications. My favorite is HFS.

Rest in next post.