Didier Stevens

Tuesday 7 September 2010

Integrity Levels and DLL Injection

Filed under: bpmtk,Windows 7,Windows Vista — Didier Stevens @ 0:53

Microsoft introduced a new kernel security feature with Windows Vista: Integrity Levels. Each process has an integrity level: Low, Medium, High or System. A process with a lower integrity level can’t write to an object with a higher integrity level.

For processes, this means that a process with low integrity level can’t open a handle with full access to a process with medium integrity level. This is what I’ll show in this post: a process with low integrity level can’t inject a DLL in a process with medium (or higher) integrity level.

Normal, non-elevated processes run with medium integrity level by default. Here I inject a DLL into notepad.exe with my bpmtk utility:

The integrity level of the cmd.exe process is medium, and therefor the integrity level of bpmtk.exe (launched by cmd.exe) is also medium. Because the integrity level of the notepad.exe process is also medium, the DLL injection succeeds.

To help you identify the integrity level of processes on your machine, you can add an integrity level column to process explorer:

Now we’ll do the same DLL injection from a cmd.exe and bpmtk.exe process with low integrity level.

The icacls.exe utility can be used to view and set integrity levels. Because I don’t want to change the integrity level of the original cmd.exe, I’m making a copy of cmd.exe: cmd-low-il.exe. Cmd-low-il.exe has no explicit integrity level:

When we set an explicit integrity level (low) on cmd-low-il.exe with icacls.exe, cmd-low-il.exe will run with low integrity level in stead of medium. And every program started by this cmd-low-il.exe process will also run with low integrity level.

You need admin right to assign a low integrity level to cmd-low-il.exe:

Here you can see the low integrity level setting:

When we start cmd-il-low.exe, it will run with low integrity level. Executing bpmtk.exe from cmd-il-low.exe will force bpmtk.exe to run with low integrity level. bpmtk.exe fails to inject the DLL. When bpmtk.exe tries to open a handle with full access to notepad.exe, the call to OpenProcess fails with access denied. Notepad.exe runs with medium integrity level, and bpmtk.exe running with low integrity level has no right to open a handle to modify the notepad.exe process.

Integrity Levels look like a good security feature to sandbox vulnerable, Internet facing applications. But there are issues I’ll highlight in an upcoming post.

Thursday 19 November 2009

Update: bpmtk with hook-createprocess.dll

Filed under: bpmtk,Hacking,My Software,PDF,Update — Didier Stevens @ 19:32

There are no real changes in this new version of bpmtk, only a new DLL (hook-createprocess.dll) was added. You can use this DLL to protect your Windows machine from getting infected by the current malicious documents found in-the-wild.

You can download bpmtk version 0.1.6.0 here.

Hook-createprocess.dll is a DLL that patches the process into which it is loaded to prevent it from creating new processes. It does this by patching the Import Address Table of kernel32.dll for ntdll.dll to hook API functions NtCreateProcessEx, NtCreateProcess and NtCreateUserProcess.
Calls to these functions are intercepted and not passed on to the original functions. Instead, a code is returned indicating that the operation was blocked. The result is that functions in kernel32 used to create new processes fail (like WinExec) and hence that the patched process can’t create new processes.
This is all it takes to block most shellcode found in malicious documents like PDF malware. Shellcode like this does the following:


Of course, since this protective measure is taken by patching the process, shellcode could undo this patching and bypass our protection. Or it could use the ntdll API and not be hindered by our patch. But actual malware found in-the-wild doesn’t do this (not talking about targeted attacks) and is thus prevented from executing the trojan it just downloaded or extracted from the PDF document.

If you want better protection, you’ll have to use something that works at the level of the kernel, like sandboxing software.

However, this patch comes with some drawbacks, because it also blocks bening new processes. For example, the update function of Adobe Acrobat requires the creation of a new process. To reenable the creation of processes, you have to unload hook-createprocess.dll (unloading removes the hooks). bpmtk has a function to unload DLLs from a process (reject).

There are a couple of trick to load this DLL with the program you want to protect. I’ll describe a generic method in an upcoming post, but now I want to explain it for a specific program.
Programs have a list of DLLs they need for their execution. We will use a PE-file editor to add our hook-createprocess.dll to this list. hook-createprocess.dll exports a dummy function (_Dummy) just so you can add to the imports table of an executable. We will use LordPE to add hook-createprocess.dll with _Dummy to Adobe Reader:

Right-click the Import table:

And don’t forget to save…

Monday 5 October 2009

Preventing Applications From Starting (Malicious) Applications

Filed under: bpmtk,Malware,My Software,PDF,Vulnerabilities — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

Another very effective way to prevent malicious documents from infecting PCs, is to prevent vulnerable applications from starting other applications. As almost all shellcode found in malicious documents in-the-wild (again, I’m excluding targeted attacks) will ultimately start another process to execute the trojan, blocking this will prevent the trojan from executing.

This is an old idea you’ll find implemented in many sandboxes and HIPS. I added a new DLL to my basic process manipulation tool kit to prevent applications from creating a new process. Loading this DLL inside a process will prevent this process from creating a new process. I’ll explain the technique used in my DLL and how to load it in vulnerable applications in upcoming blogposts, but I want to start with showing how it prevents malicious documents from infecting a PC.

When the DLL is loaded inside a process, it will patch the Create Process API to intercept and block calls to it:

hook-createprocess-010

As a first test, we’ll use my eicar.pdf document.

hook-createprocess-009

Clicking the button will save the eicar.txt file to a temporary folder and launch the editor.

Adobe Acrobat reader will warn you when an application is to be launched:

hook-createprocess-011

But when you accept, the editor will be prevented to execute:

hook-createprocess-012

That’s because the DLL intercepted and blocked the Create Process call:

hook-createprocess-013

As a second test, let’s use a real malicious PDF document. The hooks installed by the DLL prevent it from executing the trojan:

hook-createprocess-014

Adobe Reader starts and then just crashes, without spawning another process:

hook-createprocess-017

When opening the same malicious PDF, but without the protecting DLL, the machine gets trojaned (execution of 1.exe and Internet Explorer):

hook-createprocess-018

This simple way of preventing applications from launching other applications comes with some drawbacks. For example, the Check Update function in Adobe Reader will not function anymore.

When you have a sandboxing system of HIPS installed on the machines you manage, check if you can use it to prevent vulnerable applications from starting other applications. If it doesn’t provide such a feature, try the new DLL I’ll be posting in the new version of bpmtk.

Thursday 25 June 2009

bpmtk: Injecting VBScript

Filed under: bpmtk,Hacking,My Software — Didier Stevens @ 7:03

Here’s a new trick: injecting VBScript in a process. I’ve developed a DLL that will create a COM instance of the VBScripting engine and let it execute a VBScript. Injecting this DLL in a running program results in execution of the VBScript in the context of the running program. Here’s an example where I wrote a VBScript to search and replace a string in the memory of the notepad process:

Here is part of the VBScript I developed to search and replace inside the memory of a process. It uses custom methods like Peek, Poke and Output that I’ve added to the scripting engine:

20090609-205420

I’ll provide more details in an upcoming blogpost on bpmtk version 0.1.5.0, but you can already download it here.

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