Blog di AlùK

1. Overview

Is an elf32 static and stripped binary, but the good news is that it was compiled with gcc and it will not have shitty runtimes and libs to fingerprint, just the libc ... and libprhrhead
This binary is writed by Ricardo J Rodrigez

When it's executed, it seems that is computing the flag:

But this process never ends .... let's see what strace say:

There is a thread deadlock, maybe the start point can be looking in IDA the xrefs of 0x403a85
Maybe we can think about an encrypted flag that is not decrypting because of the lock.

This can be solved in two ways:

static: understanding the cryptosystem and programming our own decryptor
dynamic: fixing the the binary and running it (hard: antidebug, futex, rands ...)

At first sight I thought that dynamic approach were quicker, but it turned more complex than the static approach.

2. Static approach

Crawling the xrefs to the futex, it is possible to locate the main:

With libc/libpthread function fingerprinting or a bit of manual work, we have the symbols, here is the main, where 255 threads are created and joined, when the threads end, the xor key is calculated and it calls the print_flag:

The code of the thread is passed to the libc_pthread_create, IDA recognize this area as data but can be selected as code and function.

This is the thread code decompiled, where we can observe two infinite loops for ptrace detection and preload (although is static) this antidebug/antihook are easy to detect at this point.

we have to observe the important thing, is the key random?? well, with the same seed the random sequence will be the same, then the key is "hidden" in the predictability of the random.

If the threads are not executed on the creation order, the key will be wrong because is xored with the th_id which is the identify of current thread.

The print_key function, do the xor between the key and the flag_cyphertext byte by byte.

And here we have the seed and the first bytes of the cypher-text:

With radare we can convert this to a c variable quickly:

And here is the flag cyphertext:

And with some radare magics, we have the c initialized array:

radare, is full featured :)

With a bit of rand() calibration here is the solution ...

The code:
https://github.com/NocONName/CTF_NcN2k15/blob/master/theAnswer/solution.c

3. The Dynamic Approach

First we have to patch the anti-debugs, on beginning of the thread there is two evident anti-debugs (well anti preload hook and anti ptrace debugging) the infinite loop also makes the anti-debug more evident:

There are also a third anti-debug, a bit more silent, if detects a debugger trough the first available descriptor, and here comes the fucking part, don't crash the execution, the execution continues but the seed is modified a bit, then the decryption key will not be ok.

Ok, the seed is incremented by one, this could be a normal program feature, but this is only triggered if the fileno(open("/","r")) > 3 this is a well known anti-debug, that also can be seen from a traced execution.

Ok, just one byte patch, seed+=1 to seed+=0, (add eax, 1 to add eax, 0)

before:

after:

To patch the two infinite loops, just nop the two bytes of each jmp $-0

Ok, but repairing this binary is harder than building a decryptor, we need to fix more things:

The sleep(randInt(1,3)) of the beginning of the thread to execute the threads in the correct order
Modify the pthread_cond_wait to avoid the futex()
We also need to calibrate de rand() to get the key (just patch the sleep and add other rand() before the pthread_create loop

Adding the extra rand() can be done with a patch because from gdb is not possible to make a call rand() in this binary.

With this modifications, the binary will print the key by itself.

More info

Bitcoin mining malware for Linux servers - samples

Research: Dr. Web. Linux.Lady

Sample Credit: Tim Strazzere

MD5 list:

0DE8BCA756744F7F2BDB732E3267C3F4
55952F4F41A184503C467141B6171BA7
86AC68E5B09D1C4B157193BB6CB34007
E2CACA9626ED93C3D137FDF494FDAE7C
E9423E072AD5A31A80A31FC1F525D614

Download. Email me if you need the password.

More information

CEH scanning methodology is the important step i.e. scanning for open ports over a network. Port is the technique used to scan for open ports. This methodology performed for the observation of the open and close ports running on the targeted machine. Port scanning gathered a valuable information about the host and the weakness of the system more than ping sweep.

Network Mapping (NMAP)

Basically NMAP stands for Network Mapping. A free open source tool used for scanning ports, service detection, operating system detection and IP address detection of the targeted machine. Moreover, it performs a quick and efficient scanning a large number of machines in a single session to gathered information about ports and system connected to the network. It can be used over UNIX, LINUX and Windows.

There are some terminologies which we should understand directly whenever we heard like Open ports, Filtered ports and Unfiltered ports.

Open Ports means the target machine accepts incoming request on that port cause these ports are used to accept packets due to the configuration of TCP and UDP.

Filtered ports means the ports are usually opened but due to firewall or network filtering the nmap doesn't detect the open ports.

Unfiltered means the nmap is unable to determine whether the port is open or filtered while the port is accessible.

Types Of NMAP Scan

Scan Type	Description
Null Scan	This scan is performed by both an ethical hackers and black hat hackers. This scan is used to identify the TCP port whether it is open or closed. Moreover, it only works over UNIX based systems.
TCP connect	The attacker makes a full TCP connection to the target system. There's an opportunity to connect the specifically port which you want to connect with. SYN/ACK signal observed for open ports while RST/ACK signal observed for closed ports.
ACK scan	Discovering the state of firewall with the help ACK scan whether it is stateful or stateless. This scan is typically used for the detection of filtered ports if ports are filtered. Moreover, it only works over the UNIX based systems.
Windows scan	This type of scan is similar to the ACK scan but there is ability to detect an open ports as well filtered ports.
SYN stealth scan	This malicious attack is mostly performed by attacker to detect the communication ports without making full connection to the network. This is also known as half-open scanning.

All NMAP Commands

Commands	Scan Performed
-sT	TCP connect scan
-sS	SYN scan
-sF	FIN scan
-sX	XMAS tree scan
-sN	Null scan
-sP	Ping scan
-sU	UDP scan
-sO	Protocol scan
-sA	ACK scan
-sW	Window scan
-sR	RPC scan
-sL	List/DNS scan
-sI	Idle scan
-Po	Don't ping
-PT	TCP ping
-PS	SYN ping
-PI	ICMP ping
-PB	ICMP and TCP ping
-PB	ICMP timestamp
-PM	ICMP netmask
-oN	Normal output
-oX	XML output
-oG	Greppable output
-oA	All output
-T Paranoid	Serial scan; 300 sec between scans
-T Sneaky	Serial scan; 15 sec between scans
-T Polite	Serial scan; .4 sec between scans
-T Normal	Parallel scan
-T Aggressive	Parallel scan, 300 sec timeout, and 1.25 sec/probe
-T Insane	Parallel scan, 75 sec timeout, and .3 sec/probe

How to Scan

You can perform nmap scanning over the windows command prompt followed by the syntax below. For example, If you wanna scan the host with the IP address 192.168.2.1 using a TCP connect scan type, enter this command: