Didier Stevens

Saturday 27 April 2019

Update: format-bytes.py Version 0.0.8

Filed under: My Software,Reverse Engineering,Update — Didier Stevens @ 9:42

This new version of format-bytes.py (a tool to decompose structured binary data with format strings) brings a couple of new features.

Format strings can now be stored in libraries: you can store often used format strings (option -f) in text files and refer to them for using with format-bytes.py. A library file has the name of the program (format-bytes) and extension .library. Library files can be placed in the same directory as the program, and/or the current directory.
A library file is a text file. Each format string has a name and takes one line: name=formatstring.

Example:
eqn=<HIHIIIIIBBBBBBBBBB40sIIBB*:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXsXXXX

This defines format string eqn. It can be retrieved with option -f name=eqn.
This format string can be followed by annotations (use a space character to separate the format string and the annotations):

Example:
eqn=<HIHIIIIIBBBBBBBBBB40sIIBB*:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXsXXXX 1: size of EQNOLEFILEHDR 9: Start MTEF header 14: Full size record 15: Line record 16: Font record 19: Shellcode (fontname)

A line in a library file that starts with # is a comment and is ignored.

Format strings inside a library can be used with option -f. For example, to use format string eqn1, you use option -f name=eqn1. You prefix the format string name with “name=”, like in this example:

Option -s can also take value r now, to select the remainder: -s r. Like this:

The FILETIME format has been added. To use it explicitly, use representation format T.

And finally, with option -F (Find), you can search for values inside a binary file. For the moment, only integers can be searched. Start the option value with #i# followed by the decimal number to search for.

Example:

format-bytes_V0_0_8.zip (https)
MD5: 22F216C2304434A302B0904A9D4AF1FE
SHA256: A38D9B57DDB23543E2D462CD0AF51A4DCEDA1814CF9EAD315716D471EAACEF19

Thursday 25 April 2019

Update: python-per-line.py Version 0.0.6

Filed under: My Software,Update — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

In this new version of python-per-line, I introduce libraries.

Custom Python code can be stored in a “library file”, i.e. a text file with name python-per-line.library. This file is loaded automatically upon execution when it is found in the current directory or in the same directory as the script (or both).

Currently, the distributed library file contains a small Python function to defang URLs: Defang.

It can be used like this:

If you just want to apply a function to each line, you don’t have to type a full expression like in the example above (Defang(line)).

You can also use option -n and just type the function name, like this:

python-per-line_V0_0_6.zip (https)
MD5: FDA3365E2DC54EF65B2E8F6EE8D0DB9E
SHA256: E7496229BF64B2772AF5C49E4BC065281F06043192453E96A783808F6F3E61D1

Sunday 21 April 2019

Update: translate.py Version 2.5.6

Filed under: My Software,Update — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

This is just a small update to the man page.

translate_v2_5_6.zip (https)
MD5: 9615167810202129C0CFC3D5125CC354
SHA256: F926E474B966790A1077B76C029F912100128C4F1CE848781C14DF4B628395D7

Saturday 20 April 2019

Extracting “Stack Strings” from Shellcode

Filed under: Malware,My Software,Reverse Engineering — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

A couple of years ago, I wrote a Python script to enhance Radare2 listings: the script extract strings from stack frame instructions.

Recently, I combined my tools to achieve the same without a 32-bit disassembler: I extract the strings directly from the binary shellcode.

What I’m looking for is sequences of instructions like this: mov dword [ebp – 0x10], 0x61626364. In 32-bit code, that’s C7 45 followed by one byte (offset operand) and 4 bytes (value operand).

Or: C7 45 10 64 63 62 61. I can write a regular expression for this instruction, and use my tool re-search.py to extract it from the binary shellcode. I want at least 2 consecutive mov … instructions: {2,}.

I’m using option -f because I want to process a binary file (re-search.py expects text files by default).

And I’m using option -x to produce hexadecimal output (to simplify further processing).

I want to get rid of the bytes for the instruction and the offset operand. I do this with sed:

I could convert this back to text with my tool hex-to-bin.py:

But that’s not ideal, because now all characters are merged into a single line.

My tool python-per-line.py gives a better result by processing this hexadecimal input line per line:

Remark that I also use function repr to escape unprintable characters like 00.

This output provides a good overview of all API functions called by this shellcode.

If you take a close look, you’ll notice that the last strings are incomplete: that’s because they are missing one or two characters, and these are put on the stack with another mov instruction for single or double bytes. I can accommodate my regular expression to take these instructions into account:

This is the complete command:

re-search.py -x -f "(?:\xC7\x45.....){2,}(?:(?:\xC6\x45..)|(?:\x66\xC7\x45...))?" shellcode.bin.vir | sed "s/66c745..//g" | sed "s/c[67]45..//g" | python-per-line.py -e "import binascii" "repr(binascii.a2b_hex(line))"

Monday 1 April 2019

list-interfaces.xlsm

Filed under: Entertainment,My Software — Didier Stevens @ 0:01

Inspired by today’s date and ShadowHammer, I created an Excel spreadsheet that will list all the interfaces on your Windows machine (using GetIfTable).

One of the properties that is listed, is the MAC address, and it is compared with a list of MAC addresses found in sheet “List”. As a PoC, I populated that sheet with the initial ShadowHammer list published by @SkylightCyber.

And I got a hit on one of my laptops:

00:50:56:C0:00:08 is a generic MAC address used by VMware for the “VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet8” (VMware Workstation is installed on that machine). So no, that laptop was not targeted by the ShadowHammer actor: it’s a false positive (revised lists were published, one with 2 MAC addresses per line, and that’s where this MAC address appears now).

Enjoy! 😉

list-interfaces.zip (https)
MD5: B7DFF86AA0AFD83EF7796F12CEF46D6C
SHA256: 2AD35C825D1A5D9BCFF75C1374C238415C15BADA3CDB0A5EA7178DE4E1DEF0A2

Monday 25 March 2019

Update: pecheck.py Version 0.7.6

Filed under: My Software,Update — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

During recent malware analysis, I had a need to quickly extract overlays from a bunch of PE files. This can be done with this new version: use option “-g o” to get the overlay:

Option -A (rle ASCII dump) is also new.

And option -y (yara) supports regex (#r#) and hexadecimal (#x#) ad-hoc rules.

 

pecheck-v0_7_6.zip (https)
MD5: C07704E37FB1C18B769BB5336CD2478A
SHA256: 312E730F6DE784808B6E5BE355752803F281F7DC838E4B9C6B3FE924622F47F8

Saturday 23 March 2019

Quickpost: PDF Tools Download Feature

Filed under: My Software,PDF,Quickpost — Didier Stevens @ 9:34

When I’m asked to perform a quick check of an online PDF document, that I expect to be benign, I will just point my PDF tools to the online document. When you provide an URL argument to pdf-parser, it will download the document and perform the analysis (without writing it to disk).

Quickpost info

 

Friday 15 March 2019

Maldoc: Excel 4.0 Macro

Filed under: maldoc,Malware,My Software — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

MD5 007de2c71861a3e1e6d70f7fe8f4ce9b is a malicious document: a spreadsheet with Excel 4.0 macros.

Excel 4.0 macros predate VBA macros: they are composed of functions placed inside cells of a macro sheet.

These macros are not stored in dedicated VBA streams, but as BIFF records in the Workbook stream.

Spreadsheets with Excel 4.0 macros can be analyzed with oledump.py and plugin plugin_biff.py.

Option -x of plugin_biff will select all BIFF records relevant for the analysis of Excel 4.0 macros:

In this output, we have all the BIFF records necessary to 1) determine that this is a malicious document and 2) report what this maldoc does.

The first BIFF record, BOUNDSHEET, tells us that the spreadsheet contains a Excel 4.0 macro sheet that is hidden.

The third BIFF LABEL record tells us that there is a cell with name Auto_Open: the macros will execute when the spreadsheet is opened.

And then we have BIFF FORMULA records that tell us that something is CONCATENATEd and EXECuted.

The BIFF STRING record provides us with the exact command (msiexec …) that will be executed.

The latest version of plugin_biff contains much larger lists of tokens and functions used in formula expressions. Of course, it’s still possible that tokens and/or functions are used unknown by my plugin. This is now clearly indicated in the output:

*UNKNOWN FUNCTION* is reported when a function number is unknown. The function number is always reported. Here, for the sake of this example, a crippled version of plugin_biff reports functions with number 0x0037 and 0x0150. In the released version of plugin_biff, functions 0x0037 and 0x0150 are identified as RETURN and CONCATENATE respectively.

*INCOMPLETE FORMULA PARSING* is reported when a formula expression can not be fully parsed. Left of the warning *INCOMPLETE FORMULA PARSING*, the partially parsed expression can be found, and right of the warning, the remaining, unparsed expression is reported as a Python string. If the remainder contains bytes that could be potentially dangerous functions like EXEC, then this is reported too.

The complete analysis of the maldoc is explained in this video:

Wednesday 13 March 2019

Update: oledump.py Version 0.0.42

Filed under: My Software,Update — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

This version comes with a major update of the BIFF plugin (for Excel files). New features for plugin_biff.py will be discussed in detail in next blog post.

And there are 2 minor changes to oledump itself.

A warning is displayed when an Office file format without macro-support is selected, like .docx files:

In prior versions, no output was produced at all when files like .docx files were processed.

And there’s a bug fix when selecting non-existing streams:

oledump_V0_0_42.zip (https)
MD5: C5CCF18F9F10CB6916CC74C002C78EDE
SHA256: 14A1FDA4AB57B09729AEB2697818782FAE498369A760FEC8AEE5CFB0A0E9D126

Monday 11 March 2019

Update: re-search.py Version 0.0.13

Filed under: My Software,Update — Didier Stevens @ 0:00

In this update, you can also save your library with custom regular expressions in the working directory (in prior versions, it would only take it from the application directory).

Here is an example with a regular expression for MAC addresses:

And there’s a small fix for URL regex: a – character was not considered to be part of the query of a URL.

re-search_V0_0_13.zip (https)
MD5: 241464482856756FF1C0C2386AF84CD5
SHA256: 9409EC639C4C6E988ADFC2401CA89200712BE171894D214B56E4ACC84C32E489

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