Didier Stevens

Monday 28 September 2009

Quickpost: SAFER and Malicious Documents

Filed under: My Software,Quickpost — Didier Stevens @ 17:50

I wasn’t going to mention SAFER to restrict the rights of an application, because Software Restriction Policies can be bypassed. But a Tweet by Edi Strosar made me review my viewpoint. In this particular case, bypassing SRP is a non-issue, because the user is already local admin!

Software Restriction Policies allow you to force specific applications to run with a restricted token. As Michael explained it with AD GPOs, I’ll show it with local policies.

Enable SAFER policies for SRPs by adding DWORD registry key Levels (value 0x31000) to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Safer\CodeIdentifiers:

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Start the Local Security Policy administration tool and go to the Software Restriction Policies. You’ll have to create new policies if this is the first time you configure SRPs.

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Create a new rule in Additional Rules. We’ll identify the application to restrict by its path and name, so create a Path Rule:

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For the security level, select Basic User:

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If you have no Basic User option, you forgot to update the registry before launching the administration tool:

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Select the application to restrict:

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This rule will force Adobe Reader to run with a restricted token:

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Writing to SYSTEM32 is denied:

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Quickpost info

Sunday 27 September 2009

Preventing Malicious Documents from Compromising Windows Machines

Filed under: My Software — Didier Stevens @ 13:33

Almost all shellcode I see in malicious documents (PDF, Word, Powerpoint, …) found “in the wild” does the following:

  1. download a trojan from the Internet using HTTP
  2. write the downloaded executable to SYSTEM32
  3. execute the downloaded executable

This infection method only works if the user is local admin. If the exploited program has no rights to write to SYSTEM32, the shellcode will just fail and the trojan will not infect the machine.

To protect yourself and/or your users against this type of attack (I’m not talking about targeted attacks), restrict the user rights. Windows Vista and later versions do this for you with UAC, even if you’re an administrator.

On Windows XP, you have to use a normal user account in stead of an admin account to achieve this. But running non-admin on Windows XP is not always easy. If you really need to allow admin rights on Windows XP, you can still prevent high-risk applications (like Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office) from having full control over the system by restricting their rights. This is done by using a restricted token for the processes of these applications.

There are 2 popular tools to launch programs with a restricted token:

Both tools create a restricted token (by removing privileges and denying groups that provide local admin rights) and then launch the target program with this restricted token.

It’s not always easy to launch a program with DropMyRights, as there are many ways a program can be launched on Windows. For example with a file-type association or from a browser. To help you configure Windows to always restrict the rights of a specific program, StripMyRights also support the “Image File Execution Options” method with the /D option. The “Image File Execution Options” is designed to allow you to launch a program automatically inside a debugger. In the “Image File Execution Options” registry key, you specify the debugger to use. But this can really be any executable.

Example: to restrict the rights of Adobe Reader, add StripMyRights to the AcroRd32.exe Image Execution path like this:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\acrord32.exe]
"Debugger"="StripMyRights.exe /D /L N"

This way, each time AcroRd32.exe is executed, StripMyRights executes first, creates a restricted token and then launches AcroRd32.exe with this restricted token.

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But executing StripMyRights before executing the target application doesn’t always yield satisfactory results, sometimes it breaks the application, because of the broken process tree.

That’s why I developed an alternative, LowerMyRights.dll, to be presented in an upcoming blogpost.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

QuickPost: Arduino + Alcohol Gas Sensor + WiShield + LCD

Filed under: Arduino,Hardware,Quickpost — Didier Stevens @ 20:07

This is a little project I’m working on for Brucon:

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This is an Arduino with a WiFi adapter (WiShield), an LCD and a gas sensor (senses gases like ethanol).

What it does: the Arduino reads the sensor (uncalibrated for the moment), displays its value on line 1 of the LCD and also servers it on a web page (with an embedded webserver connecting to the WiFi network via the WiShield).
If the sensor read-out is 900 or more, a LED is turned on.
And I can send a message via the webserver to line 2 of the LCD.

The problem I had to solve: the LCD didn’t work when the WiShield was operating.

The cause: the WiShield library and the LCD library use some common pins.

Solution: change the pin assignment in the LCD library code (LCD4Bit.cpp):

// --------- PINS -------------------------------------
//is the RW pin of the LCD under our control?  If we're only ever going to write to the LCD, we can use one less microcontroller pin, and just tie the LCD pin to the necessary signal, high or low.
//this stops us sending signals to the RW pin if it isn't being used.
int USING_RW = false;

//RS, RW and Enable can be set to whatever you like
int RS = 1;
int RW = 11;
int Enable = 0;
//DB should be an unseparated group of pins  - because of lazy coding in pushNibble()
int DB[] = {3, 4, 5, 6};  //wire these to DB4~7 on LCD.

//--------------------------------------------------------

And don’t forget to delete LCD4Bit.o before recompiling the code. The Arduino IDE doesn’t check dependencies of libraries when compiling.

And yes, once calibrated, you should be able to use this alcohol gas sensor to prevent drunk e-mailing 😉 But you’ll need to add a sensor to verify you’re actually blowing into the alcohol gas sensor. For example a gas pressure sensor.

Quickpost info

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Link: case of the tweep abduction

Filed under: Entertainment,Uncategorized — Didier Stevens @ 20:15

I know, I love a bit of mischief 😉

Wim renamed his “old” Twitter account @domgingelom to the “new” @wimremes. And then I promptly registered @domdingelom… 😉

Did some Tweeting under an assumed name…

And then gave the “new” @domdingelom to Wim.

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