Full Disclosure mailing list archives

Re: Combining DLL hijacking with USB keyboard emulation


From: Rodrigo Menezes <rodrigo () rapidlight io>
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 13:19:22 -0200

While I agree that there is a lot you can do if you can plug a
malicious USB device into a computer and that you might not need
to take advantage of the DLL problem in order to successfully
complete the attack, my point is that it could help.

Consider that the attack could be carried out either by
convincing the user to plug in the USB device or by sneakly
plugging it into their computer while they're away. Therefore,
reducing the time it takes to complete and how much fuzz it
makes on the screen could be a great advantage in a lot of
situations.

In my own experiments, a payload that simply starts transfering
a DLL completes in about six seconds. You can unplug the device
in less time than that, right after it opens cmd and starts the
execution of the one line of commands. This is quicker than any
other I've seen before.

---- On Sat, 09 Jan 2016 08:14:03 -0200 <gremlin () gremlin ru> wrote ---- 
On 2016-01-08 00:50:51 -0200, Rodrigo Menezes wrote: 
 
 > Many of us have now been long aware of the possibility of 
 > programming an USB device to emulate a keyboard and automatically 
 > send keystrokes in order to perform malicious actions on a 
 > computer. Some of the most interesting payloads that can be used 
 > with this technique are based around downloading or creating an 
 > executable file and then running it. 
 > I'd like to bring to light that this attack could be combined 
 > with DLL hijacking, with some benefits for the attacker. 
 > For instance, a payload which simply downloads a DLL to the 
 > current user's folder tends to complete faster and be more 
 > reliable than one which tries to transfer an executable 
 > AND immediately run it. The DLL would then most likely 
 > be found and executed by a vulnerable installer [...] This way, 
 > there would be no need for embeeding in the payload a complicated 
 > attempt of bypassing the active defense mechanisms. 
 
Once you can fool the user to plug the USB device, you don't need 
anything else. The device may appear as 
1. A mass storage, and 
2. A keyboard or any other HID, and 
3. Some unknown hardware 
 
Once the W-ndows enumerates this hardware, it will try to find and 
automatically install drivers for it. With a mass storage and a 
keyboard it will succeed, thus immediately bringing them to use, 
and unknown hardware would bring up a "search for drivers" dialog, 
where the attacker may (after some delay) send keystrokes to choose 
"search removable devices for drivers". Obviously, the mass storage 
part of the USB device would contain suitable .inf file pointing to 
malicious binaries. 
 
The USB device capable of performing such attack may be as simple 
as ATtiny85 + 25Q64 chips (both are available in a 3*4 mm SOP8), 
with a total cost of 1 EUR. The 25Q64 offers 8 Mbyte of storage, 
which is well enough for almost anything. 
 
 
--  
Alexey V. Vissarionov aka Gremlin from Kremlin 
GPG: 8832FE9FA791F7968AC96E4E909DAC45EF3B1FA8 
 
_______________________________________________ 
Sent through the Full Disclosure mailing list 
https://nmap.org/mailman/listinfo/fulldisclosure 
Web Archives & RSS: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/ 




_______________________________________________
Sent through the Full Disclosure mailing list
https://nmap.org/mailman/listinfo/fulldisclosure
Web Archives & RSS: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/


Current thread: