The Ease Of Adding Trojans To Major Financial Android Apps

May 24, 2015 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

This was both an amusing and frightening talk. [Sam Bowne] presented How to Trojan Financial Android Apps on Saturday afternoon at the LayerOne Conference. [Sam] calculates that 80-90% of the apps provided by major financial institutions like banks and investment companies are vulnerable and the ease with which trojans can be rolled into them is incredible.

Some Background

[Sam] did a great job of concisely describing the circumstances that make Android particularly vulnerable to the attacks which are the subject of the talk. Android programs are packaged as APK files which are easy to unpack. The “compiled” code itself is called smali and is readable in a similar way as Java. It’s super easy to unpack and search this byte code using grep. Once the interesting parts are located, the smali code can be altered and the entire thing can be repackaged. The app will need to be resigned but Google doesn’t control the signing keys so an attacker can simply generate a new key and use that to sign the app. The user still needs to install the file, but Android allows app installation from webpages, email, etc. so this isn’t a problem for the bad guys either.

The Attack

So what can be done? This is about information harvesting. [Sam’s] proof of concept uses a python script to insert logging for every local variable. The script looks at the start of every module in the smali code, grabs the number of local variables, increments it by one and uses this extra variable to write out the values through logcat.

bank-of-america-logcat — ADB Log shows the Credit Card Number

He demonstrated live on the Bank of America app. From the user side of things it looks exactly like the official app, because it is the official app. However, when you register your account the log reports the card number as you can see here. Obviously this information could easily be phoned-home using a number of techniques.

As mentioned, the vast majority of banking and financial apps are vulnerable to this, but some have made an attempt to make it more difficult. He found the Bancorp app never exposes this information in local variables so it can’t just be logged out. However, the same trojan technique works as a keylogger since he found the same function kept getting called every time a key is pressed. The same was true of the Capital One app, but it echos out Google’s Android keymap values rather than ascii; easy enough to translate back into readable data though.

The Inability to Report Vulnerabilities

What is the most troubling is that none of these companies have a means of reporting security vulnerabilities. It was amusing to hear [Sam] recount his struggle to report these issues to Charles Schwab. Online contact forms were broken and wouldn’t post data and several publicly posted email addresses bounced email. When he finally got one to accept the email he later discovered another user reporting on a forum that nobody ever answers back on any of the Schwab accounts. He resorted to a trick he has used many times in the past… Tweeting to the CEO of Charles Schwab to start up a direct-message conversation. This itself is a security problem as @SwiftOnSecurity proves by pointing out that whenever @SamBowne Tweets a CEO it’s because he found a vulnerability in that company’s platform and can’t find a reasonable way to contact the company.

There is Hope

Although very rare, sometimes these apps do get patched. The Trade King app was updated after his report and when [Sam] tried the exploit again it crashes at start-up. The log reports a verification failure. This indicates that the injected code is being noticed, but [Sam] wonders if the verification is included in the app itself. If it is, then it will be possible to track it down and disable it.

This may sound like all of us Android users should despair but that’s not the case. Adding verification, even if it’s possible to defeat it, does make the apps safer; attackers may not want to invest the extra time to try to defeat it. Also, there are obsfucators available for a few thousand dollars that will make these attacks much more difficult by making variable names unreadable. The free obsfucator available now with the Android development suites doesn’t change names of everything… local variables are left unaltered and programmers have a habit of using descriptive names for variables. For instance, BofA used “CARDNUM” in the example above.

The Slides

[Sam Bowne’s] slides and testing results for the entire talk are available under the “Upcoming Events” part of his website.

See You At LayerOne This Weekend

May 22, 2015 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

LayerOne, the first level of security. [Brian Benchoff] and I are excited to take part in our first LayerOne conference this Saturday and Sunday in Monrovia California.

Anyone in the Los Angeles area this weekend needs to get out of whatever they have planned and try out this conference that has a soul. Get the idea of a mega-con out of your head and envision a concord of highly skilled and fascinating hackers gathering to talk all things computer security. Speakers will cover topics like researching 0day exploits, copying keys from pictures taken in public, ddos attacks, social engineering, and more.

It’s not just talks, there is a ton of hands-on at LayerOne as well. I plan to finally try my hand at lock picking. Yep, I’ve covered it multiple times and we’ve even had a session led by [Datagram] at the Hackaday 10th Anniversary but I’ve never found time to give it a roll. Of course electronics are my game and [Brian] and I will both be spending a fair amount of time in the hardware hacking village. We’ll have a bunch of dev boards along with us if you want to try out an architecture with which you’re unfamiliar. This year’s LayerOne badges are sponsored by Supplyframe; we’ll have something in store for the best badge hacks we see during the weekend.

See you there!

Hacking A Thin Client To Gain Root Access

April 29, 2015 by Rick Osgood 15 Comments

[Roberto] recently discovered a clever way to gain root access to an HP t520 thin client computer. These computers run HP’s ThinPro operating system. The OS is based on Linux and is basically just a lightweight system designed to boot into a virtual desktop image loaded from a server. [Roberto’s] discovery works on systems that are running in “kiosk mode”.

The setup for the attack is incredibly simple. The attacker first stops the virtual desktop image from loading. Then, the connection settings are edited. The host field is filled with garbage, which will prevent the connection from actually working properly. The real trick is in the “command line arguments” field. The attacker simply needs to add the argument “&& xterm”. When the connection is launched, it will first fail and then launch the xterm program. This gives the attacker a command shell running under the context of whichever user the original software is running as.

The next step is to escalate privileges to root. [Roberto] discovered a special command that the default user can run as root using sudo. The “”hpobl” command launches the HP Easy Setup Wizard. Once the wizard is opened, the attacker clicks on the “Thank You” link, which will then load up the HP website in a version of Firefox. The final step is to edit Firefox’s default email program association to xterm. Now when the attacker visits an address like “mailto:test@test.com”, Firefox (running as root) launches xterm with full root privileges. These types of attacks are nothing new, but it’s interesting to see that they still persist even in newer software.

Race Conditions Exploit Granted Free Money On Web Services

April 29, 2015 by Rick Osgood 10 Comments

[Josip] has been playing around with race conditions on web interfaces lately, finding vulnerabilities on both Facebook and Digital Ocean. A race condition can occur when a piece of software processes multiple threads using a shared resource.

For example, [Josip] discovered that he was able to manipulate page reviews using just a single Facebook account. Normally, a user is permitted to leave just one review for any given Facebook page. This prevents a single user from being able to skew the page’s overall ranking by making a bunch of positive or negative reviews. The trick to manipulating the system was to intercept the HTTP request that submitted the page review. The request was then replayed over and over in a very short amount of time.

Facebook’s servers ended up processing some of these requests simultaneously, essentially unaware that multiple requests had come in so close together. The result was that multiple reviews were submitted, artificially changing the pages overall ranking even though only one review actually showed up on the page for this user. The user can then delete their single review, and repeat this cycle over and over. It took Facebook approximately two months to fix this vulnerability, but in the end it was fixed and [Josip] received a nice bounty.

The Digital Ocean hack was essentially the exact same process. This time instead of hacking page reviews, [Josip] went after some free money. He found that he was able to submit the same promotional code multiple times, resulting in a hefty discount at checkout time. Digital Ocean wasted no time fixing this bug, repairing it within just ten days of the disclosure.

D-Link Fails At Strings

April 14, 2015 by Eric Evenchick 32 Comments

Small Office and Home Office (SOHO) wireless routers have terrible security. That’s nothing new. But it is somewhat sad that manufacturers just keep repurposing the same broken firmware. Case in point: D-Link’s new DIR-890L, which looks like a turtled hexapod. [Craig] looked behind the odd case and grabbed the latest firmware for this device from D-Link’s website. Then he found a serious vulnerability.

The usual process was applied to the firmware image. Extract it, run binwalk to find the various contents of the firmware image, and then extract the root filesystem. This contains all the code that runs the router’s various services.

The CGI scripts are an obvious place to poke for issues. [Colin] disassembled the single executable that handles all CGI requests and started looking at the code that handles Home Network Administration Protocol (HNAP) requests. The first find was that system commands were being built using HNAP data. The data wasn’t being sanitized, so all that was needed was a way to bypass authentication.

This is where D-Link made a major error. They wanted to allow one specific URL to not require authentication. Seems simple, compare string A to string B and ensure they match. But they used the strstr function. This will return true if string A contains string B. Oops.

So authentication can be bypassed, telnetd can be started, and voila: a root shell on D-Link’s most pyramid-shaped router. Oh, and you can’t disable HNAP. May we suggest OpenWrt or dd-wrt?

Breaking Dridex Malware With Excel Macro Password Exploit

March 20, 2015 by Rick Osgood 17 Comments

[Ronnie] recently posted a new chapter in his adventures in malware deconstruction. This time the culprit was an infected Excel spreadsheet file. The .xls file was attached to a phishing email claiming to be related to a tax rebate. With tax season in full swing, this type of phishing message would be likely to be opened by an inexperienced user.

[Ronnie] saved the file to a virtual machine to prevent his real workstation from getting infected. He then opened it up in Excel and noticed that it immediately attempted to run macros. A macro is essentially visual basic scripting that runs inside of the spreadsheet file. You can use it for simple automation, cell formatting, or do even more complicated tasks like reach out to external websites and pull information. This malware focused on the latter.

[Ronnie] used the alt + F11 shortcut to view the macros. Unfortunately the attackers had password protected them. [Ronnie] wouldn’t be able to view the macro code without knowing the password. Luckily, he learned of a surprisingly simple trick to completely bypass the macro password. He opened up the .xls file in Notepad++ and located three keys; CMG, DPB, and G. [Ronnie] then created and saved a new blank .xls document and password protected the macros with his own password. He opened up this new file in Notepad++ as well, and located those same three keys. He copied the keys from the new file into the old one, and saved the old file. This effectively changed the password of the malware file to the new one he had set for his new file. This is a nifty trick that apparently only works on the older .xls formats, not the newer .xlsx format.

After loading the macros, [Ronnie] quickly noticed that most of the code was obfuscated to make it difficult to analyze. There were, however, three named modules that reference possible sandbox evasion techniques. The malware first invokes these functions to detect the presence of a virtual machine or other type of sandbox. If it detects nothing, then the rest of the malware program is decoded and executed. [Ronnie] removed these checks and then executed the macro to verify that his change had worked.

The next step was to try to view the decoded instructions. The decoded gibberish was saved to a variable. The simplest way for [Ronnie] to view the contents of the variable was to have the program create a pop-up box that displayed the contents of that variable. After making this change and running the program again, he was able to see exactly what the malware was doing. The code actually invoked Powershell, downloaded a file from the Internet, and then extracted and executed that file. In the full write-up, [Ronnie] goes even further by downloading and analyzing the executable.

Exposing Private Facebook Photos With A Malicious App

March 20, 2015 by Rick Osgood 21 Comments

[Laxman] is back again with another hack related to Facebook photos. This hack revolves around the Facebook mobile application’s “sync photos” function. This feature automatically uploads every photo taken on your mobile device to your Facebook account. These photos are automatically marked as private so that only the user can see them. The user would have to manually update the privacy settings on each photo later in order to make them available to friends or the public.

[Laxman] wanted to put these privacy restrictions to the test, so he started poking around the Facebook mobile application. He found that the Facebook app would make an HTTP GET request to a specific URL in order to retrieve the synced photos. This request was performed using a top-level access token. The Facebook server checked this token before sending down the private images. It sounds secure, but [Laxman] found a fatal flaw.

The Facebook server only checked the owner of the token. It did not bother to check which Facebook application was making the request. As long as the app had the “user_photos” permission, it was able to pull down the private photos. This permission is required by many applications as it allows the apps to access the user’s public photos. This vulnerability could have allowed an attacker access to the victim’s private photos by building a malicious application and then tricking victims into installing the app.

At least, that could have been the case if Facebook wasn’t so good about fixing their vulnerabilities. [Laxman] disclosed his finding to Facebook. They had patched the vulnerability less than an hour after acknowledging the disclosure. They also found this vulnerability severe enough to warrant a $10,000 bounty payout to [Laxman]. This is in addition to the $12,500 [Laxman] received last month for a different Facebook photo-related vulnerability.