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In a sign that threat actors continuously shift tactics and update their defensive measures, the operators of the SolarMarker information stealer and backdoor have been found leveraging stealthy Windows Registry tricks to establish long-term persistence on compromised systems.

Cybersecurity firm Sophos, which spotted the new behavior, said that the remote access implants are still being detected on targeted networks despite the campaign witnessing a decline in November 2021.

Boasting of information harvesting and backdoor capabilities, the .NET-based malware has been linked to at least three different attack waves in 2021. The first set, reported in April, took advantage of search engine poisoning techniques to trick business professionals into visiting sketchy Google sites that installed SolarMarker on the victim's machines.

Then in August, the malware was observed targeting healthcare and education sectors with the goal of gathering credentials and sensitive information. Subsequent infection chains documented by Morphisec in September 2021 highlighted the use of MSI installers to ensure the delivery of the malware.

The SolarMarker modus operandi commences with redirecting victims to decoy sites that drop the MSI installer payloads, which, while executing seemingly legitimate install programs such as Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, Wondershare PDFelement, or Nitro Pro, also launches a PowerShell script to deploy the malware.

"These SEO efforts, which leveraged a combination of Google Groups discussions and deceptive web pages and PDF documents hosted on compromised (usually WordPress) websites, were so effective that the SolarMarker lures were usually at or near the top of search results for phrases the SolarMarker actors targeted," Sophos researchers Gabor Szappanos and Sean Gallagher said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

The PowerShell installer is designed to alter the Windows Registry and drop a .LNK file into Windows' startup directory to establish persistence. This unauthorized change results in the malware getting loaded from an encrypted payload hidden amongst what the researchers called a "smokescreen" of 100 to 300 junk files created specifically for this purpose.

"Normally, one would expect this linked file to be an executable or script file," the researchers detailed. "But for these SolarMarker campaigns the linked file is one of the random junk files, and cannot be executed itself."

What's more, the unique and random file extension used for the linked junk file is utilized to create a custom file type key, which is ultimately employed to execute the malware during system startup by running a PowerShell command from the Registry.

The backdoor, for its part, is ever-evolving, featuring an array of functionalities that allow it to steal information from web browsers, facilitate cryptocurrency theft, and execute arbitrary commands and binaries, the results of which are exfiltrated back to a remote server.

"Another important takeaway […], which was also seen in the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities targeting Exchange servers, is that defenders should always check whether attackers have left something behind in the network that they can return to later," Gallagher said. "For ProxyLogon this was web shells, for SolarMarker this is a stealthy and persistent backdoor that according to Sophos telematics is still active months after the campaign ended."

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This post is going to be a rather strange post compared to previous ones. But bear with me, in the middle of the post you will see why this post fits the IT security topic.

I'm also terribly sorry for not posting recently, but I was busy with my SPSE and SLAE certification. Both are recommended for Python and Assembly noobs like me. But back to this post.

A little bit of history

Cheating in games started as help for game testers. By using invincibility or infinite ammo testers were able to test the game quicker, which meant less money spent on testing. I personally use cheat codes in games, depending on my mood. Sometimes it feels good to slash all the opponents while I'm invincible, sometimes it is more fun to play the game without cheats. One can argue whether cheating in games is OK or not, but I believe it depends, there is no black or white. But one thing is for sure, it is part of the gaming industry. There is huge demand for cheats. There were even cheat books printed on paper...

The different types of cheats (on PC)

There are different types of cheats in PC gaming. Following is a noncomplete list of these cheats:

Cheat codes

The good old IDDQD type of cheats. These are left in the game by the developers intentionally. Nothing interesting here.

Edit memory

This is my favorite. I will talk about this at the end of the post. Whenever a user launches a new program, the program's whole memory is accessible (read/write) to every other program launched by the user. And since the memory stores the current game state (health, ammo, armor, etc.), these values can be changed easily. In the good old times, there were POKE commands to do this cheats, and the memory address to write into was published by people who found where the game stores the most critical states about the game.

Code injection

This is like patching the game code. For example, one can change the "DEC (pointer to your current health)" instruction with NOP (do nothing), thus becoming invincible. In multi-player cheats, there is the aimbot to help you aim at enemies, wallhack to see through the wall, increase hitbox of the enemy for smoother hit, or in MMORPGs, one can write macros to collect items while the player is not online. I would say the so-called "trainers" more or less fit into this category and the previous one.

Saved game editor

The first time a kid meets a hex-editor (just like the co-author of this blog did with SIM City when he was 10 years old - David). It can teach a lot about file structures, the hexadecimal numeral system, etc. Fun times.

Hacking game server

Not very common, but even more fun. Warning: endless trolling possibilities in multi-player games ahead :) How to hack a game server? Well, I think this might deserve another full blog post ...

Network traffic hacking

One last necessary type of cheating is to modify network traffic between the client and the game server. AFAIK SSL is not universal in gaming, so stunnel is not needed for this hack, but ettercap can help in changing the communication.

Why cheating becomes more critical (and challenging)?

Now in the age of in-app-payments, the game creators are no longer thinking about cheats as funny things but something to be destroyed to the ground. Because cheating decreases its revenue. Or not. At least they think it does. To quote Wikipedia here, "cheating in such games is nonetheless a legal grey area because there are no laws against modifying software which is already owned, as detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

A lot of online games include anti-cheating components like PunkBuster, nProtect GameGuard, or Valve Anti-Cheat. This whole cheating/anti-cheating industry is the same as the virus/anti-virus industry. A cat and mouse game.

Freemium games

If you have not played with "freemium" games, you should watch South Park season 18, episode 6. - "Freemium Isn't Free." If you did play with freemium games, you definitely have to watch it :) There are many problems with freemium games. It is free to install, free to play. The first 3-4 hours might be fun to play. But after that, it turns out it is impossible to advance in the game without paying money for it. And by spending cash, I mean spending a LOT! Let's have a look at today's example, an arcade racing video game.

For 99.99 USD, you can get 3 000 000 credit. For almost double the price of a new PC game, you can get these credits. In this particular game, I estimate one have to play ~6-24 hours constantly to get this amount of credit. But by playing ~6 hours, I mean 6 hours without progress in the game! Kind of boring. And what do you get from 3 000 000 credit? You can buy one of the most expensive cars, but can't tune them fully. You have to play more (without progress) or buy more. But guess what, there are more cars you can't buy by only playing the game. Those are only available via in-app-purchase.

Even though the player has 58 765 533 credits, it is not possible to buy this car. Only available through real money.

So, what are your possibilities? You are either Richie Rich, and can afford the money to buy these. Or you can be insane, and try to play the game without in-app-purchase. Or give up the game and try another freemium ... Or, you can try to hack the game!

Hack all the freemium games!

Although I was not playing this racing game from day one, I was able to witness the evolution of the cheats against this game. The cheats which worked in one day was not working one month later. The game is continuously updated to defeat the newly published cheats.

Noob start

So, I want to hack this game, what is the first thing a noob like me does? ~~Bing it!~~ Google it!

From the first page result, let's check this tool:

While trying to download that, I just have to give my email address to spammers, or my mobile number will be subscribed to premium rate text messages. What fun.

Another "cheat" program will install malware/adware on your computer. Never ever try these programs. They are fake 99% of the time and after installing those you will have another problem, not just how to hack freemium games.

Beginners start - Cheat engine

When I first heard about hacking games in memory, I visualized hours of OllyDBG/ImmunityDBG/(insert your favorite Windows debugger here). It turned out, there are some specialized tools to help you with cheating the game. No assembly knowledge required. My favourite tool is CheatEngine. I highly recommend to download it and spend 10 minutes to get past the built-in tutorial levels to get a feeling about this tool. It's super duper awesome.

When I first tried to hack this game myself, I scanned the memory for my actual credit and tried to change that, no luck. Keep reading, you will see what happened.

The second cheat I tried with cheat engine was something like this:

Start the game, play the first level, and check how many credits is paid for winning the race. Pro tip: use dual display for full-screen game cheating.
Restart the same level, attach Cheat Engine to the game's process
Scan the memory for the same value at the beginning of the race
Scan the memory for the same value at the end of the game. The intersect of the first and second scan includes the real value where the credit is stored for winning the race.
Change the values (both the real one and some false positives) to something big
Watch the game to crash
Be amazed at the money you received

Nowadays, most of the cheats on YouTube does not work. Except for these kind of cheats. I don't want to recreate that tutorial, so you should watch it first then come back.

Are you back? Great. Do you have any idea what have you just seen? No? Well, in this case, don't try this at home. Copy-pasting assembly code from random internet posts and running on your computer is always a bad idea. It is precisely as risky as downloading free programs from random internet sites.

Although I have not seen people trolling others with this cheat engine type of shellcode, I think the time will come when these will be turned into something terrible. These shellcodes might work, or might harm your computer. The good news is, we can have a look at the code and analyze it.

When you open CheatEngine and try to define a new custom type, you are greeted with a skeleton assembly code. I don't want to detail what all the skeleton code does, let's just focus on the difference between the skeleton code and the code used in the video. This is the "decrypt function":

xor eax, 0baadf00d rol eax, 0e

What does it mean? The actual credit is encrypted in memory. If you want to scan it in memory, you won't be able to find it. But! The encryption is rotating the value to the right (ROR) with 0xE (14 in decimal), and after that, it is XOR-ed with 0xbaadf00d. Decrypting it is the inverse of the functions in reverse order (in this particular case, the order does not matter, but that's not the point). The inverse function of XOR is XOR, and the inverse function of ROR (rotate right) is ROL (rotate left). Now that we analyzed the assembly code, we can be sure that it is safe to execute. Just follow the video and see your coins falling from the sky. For free. In a freemium game. Have fun!

Encrypt memory - applications at financial institutions

Another exciting thing is that I don't recall any thick client applications in the financial industry encrypting the values in memory. And I agree, there are more significant problems with thick client applications than not encrypting the essential values in memory. But still, some thick client applications are regularly updated, maintained. Maybe it is a good idea to encrypt the values in memory. It will make attackers' life harder. Not impossible, but harder. Perhaps the developers of these applications should learn from the gaming industry (or from malware developers for that matter) because it is a shame that an arcade racing game or an FPS is protected better than an application responsible for transacting millions of dollars. Just think about the RAM scraping malware stealing millions of credit card data ...

Moral of the story

Cheating is part of the gaming history, and the freemium games are trying to take away the cheats from the gamers because they want money. Thanks to CheatEngine and some clever hacks, these programs can be still beaten. And guess what, there is CheatEngine for Android - although it did not work for me on the latest Android. And sometimes, hacking all kinds of applications can be more comfortable with CheatEngine, compared to traditional debuggers.

Also, always check the code before executing it! And when you find something cool, publish it, so everyone could enjoy the games!

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Reversing Device Signals with RFCrack for Red Teaming

This blog was researched and automated by:
@Ficti0n

@GarrGhar
Mostly because someone didn't want to pay for a new clicker that was lost LOL

Websites:
Console Cowboys: http://consolecowboys.com
CC Labs: http://cclabs.io

CC Labs Github for RFCrack Code:
https://github.com/cclabsInc/RFCrack

Contrived Scenario:

Bob was tasked to break into XYZ corporation, so he pulled up the facility on google maps to see what the layout was. He was looking for any possible entry paths into the company headquarters. Online maps showed that the whole facility was surrounded by a security access gate. Not much else could be determined remotely so bob decided to take a drive to the facility and get a closer look.

Bob parked down the street in view of the entry gate. Upon arrival he noted the gate was un-manned and cars were rolling up to the gate typing in an access code or simply driving up to the gate as it opening automatically. Interestingly there was some kind of wireless technology in use.

How do we go from watching a car go through a gate, to having a physical device that opens the gate?

We will take a look at reversing a signal from an actual gate to program a remote with the proper RF signal. Learning how to perform these steps manually to get a better understanding of how RF remotes work in conjunction with automating processes with RFCrack.

Items used in this blog:

Garage Remote Clicker: https://goo.gl/7fDQ2N
YardStick One: https://goo.gl/wd88sr
RTL SDR: https://goo.gl/B5uUAR

Walkthrough Video:

Remotely sniffing signals for later analysis:

In the the previous blogs, we sniffed signals and replayed them to perform actions. In this blog we are going to take a look at a signal and reverse it to create a physical device that will act as a replacement for the original device. Depending on the scenario this may be a better approach if you plan to enter the facility off hours when there is no signal to capture or you don't want to look suspicious.

Recon:

Lets first use the scanning functionality in RFCrack to find known frequencies. We need to understand the frequencies that gates usually use. This way we can set our scanner to a limited number of frequencies to rotate through. The smaller rage of frequencies used will provide a better chance of capturing a signal when a car opens the target gate. This would be beneficial if the scanning device is left unattended within a dropbox created with something like a Kali on a Raspberry Pi. One could access it from a good distance away by setting up a wifi hotspot or cellular connection.

Based on research remotes tend to use 315Mhz, 390Mhz, 433Mhz and a few other frequencies. So in our case we will start up RFCrack on those likely used frequencies and just let it run. We can also look up the FCID of our clicker to see what Frequencies manufactures are using. Although not standardized, similar technologies tend to use similar configurations. Below is from the data sheet located at https://fccid.io/HBW7922/Test-Report/test-report-1755584 which indicates that if this gate is compatible with a universal remote it should be using the 300,310, 315, 372, 390 Frequencies. Most notably the 310, 315 and 390 as the others are only on a couple configurations.

RFCrack Scanning:

Since the most used ranges are 310, 315, 390 within our universal clicker, lets set RFCrack scanner to rotate through those and scan for signals. If a number of cars go through the gate and there are no captures we can adjust the scanner later over our wifi connection from a distance.

Destroy:RFCrack ficti0n$ python RFCrack.py -k -f 310000000 315000000 390000000

Currently Scanning: 310000000 To cancel hit enter and wait a few seconds

Currently Scanning: 315000000 To cancel hit enter and wait a few seconds

Currently Scanning: 390000000 To cancel hit enter and wait a few seconds

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

Currently Scanning: 433000000 To cancel hit enter and wait a few seconds

Example of logging output:

From the above output you will see that a frequency was found on 390. However, if you had left this running for a few hours you could easily see all of the output in the log file located in your RFCrack/scanning_logs directory. For example the following captures were found in the log file in an easily parseable format:

Destroy:RFCrack ficti0n$ cd scanning_logs/

Destroy:scanning_logs ficti0n$ ls

Dec25_14:58:45.log Dec25_21:17:14.log Jan03_20:12:56.log

Destroy:scanning_logs ficti0n$ cat Dec25_21\:17\:14.log

A signal was found on :390000000

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

A signal was found on :390000000

e0000000000104007ffe0000003000001f0fffe0fffc01ff803ff007fe0fffc1fff83fff07ffe0007c00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000e0007f037fe007fc00ff801ff07ffe0fffe1fffc3fff0001f00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003809f641fff801ff003fe00ffc1fff83fff07ffe0fffc000f80000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003c0bff01bdf003fe007fc00ff83fff07ffe0fffc1fff8001f0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000380000000000000000002007ac115001fff07ffe0fffc000f8000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Analyzing the signal to determine toggle switches:

Ok sweet, now we have a valid signal which will open the gate. Of course we could just replay this and open the gate, but we are going to create a physical device we can pass along to whoever needs entry regardless if they understand RF. No need to fumble around with a computer and look suspicious. Also replaying a signal with RFCrack is just to easy, nothing new to learn taking the easy route.

The first thing we are going to do is graph the capture and take a look at the wave pattern it creates. This can give us a lot of clues that might prove beneficial in figuring out the toggle switch pattern found in remotes. There are a few ways we can do this. If you don't have a yardstick at home you can capture the initial signal with your cheap RTL-SDR dongle as we did in the first RF blog. We could then open it in audacity. This signal is shown below.

Let RFCrack Plot the Signal For you:

The other option is let RFCrack help you out by taking a signal from the log output above and let RFCrack plot it for you. This saves time and allows you to use only one piece of hardware for all of the work. This can easily be done with the following command:

Destroy:RFCrack ficti0n$ python RFCrack.py -n -g -u 1f0fffe0fffc01ff803ff007fe0fffc1fff83fff07ffe0007c

-n = No yardstick attached

-g = graph a single signal

-u = Use this piece of data

From the graph output we see 2 distinct crest lengths and some junk at either end we can throw away. These 2 unique crests correspond to our toggle switch positions of up/down giving us the following 2 possible scenarios using a 9 toggle switch remote based on the 9 crests above:

Possible toggle switch scenarios:

down down up up up down down down down
up up down down down up up up up

Configuring a remote:

Proper toggle switch configuration allows us to program a universal remote that sends a signal to the gate. However even with the proper toggle switch configuration the remote has many different signals it sends based on the manufacturer or type of signal. In order to figure out which configuration the gate is using without physically watching the gate open, we will rely on local signal analysis/comparison.

Programming a remote is done by clicking the device with the proper toggle switch configuration until the gate opens and the correct manufacturer is configured. Since we don't have access to the gate after capturing the initial signal we will instead compare each signal from he remote to the original captured signal.

Comparing Signals:

This can be done a few ways, one way is to use an RTLSDR and capture all of the presses followed by visually comparing the output in audacity. Instead I prefer to use one tool and automate this process with RFCrack so that on each click of the device we can compare a signal with the original capture. Since there are multiple signals sent with each click it will analyze all of them and provide a percent likelihood of match of all the signals in that click followed by a comparing the highest % match graph for visual confirmation. If you are seeing a 80-90% match you should have the correct signal match.

Note: Not every click will show output as some clicks will be on different frequencies, these don't matter since our recon confirmed the gate is communicating on 390Mhz.

In order to analyze the signals in real time you will need to open up your clicker and set the proper toggle switch settings followed by setting up a sniffer and live analysis with RFCrack:

Open up 2 terminals and use the following commands:

#Setup a sniffer on 390mhz
Setup sniffer: python RFCrack.py -k -c -f 390000000.

#Monitor the log file, and provide the gates original signal
Setup Analysis: python RFCrack.py -c -u 1f0fffe0fffc01ff803ff007fe0fffc1fff83fff07ffe0007c -n.

Cmd switches used

-k = known frequency

-c = compare mode

-f = frequency

-n = no yardstick needed for analysis

Make sure your remote is configured for one of the possible toggle configurations determined above. In the below example I am using the first configuration, any extra toggles left in the down position: (down down up up up down down down down)

Analyze Your Clicks:

Now with the two terminals open and running click the reset switch to the bottom left and hold till it flashes. Then keep clicking the left button and viewing the output in the sniffing analysis terminal which will provide the comparisons as graphs are loaded to validate the output. If you click the device and no output is seen, all that means is that the device is communicating on a frequency which we are not listening on. We don't care about those signals since they don't pertain to our target.

At around the 11th click you will see high likelihood of a match and a graph which is near identical. A few click outputs are shown below with the graph from the last output with a 97% match. It will always graph the highest percentage within a click. Sometimes there will be blank graphs when the data is wacky and doesn't work so well. This is fine since we don't care about wacky data.

You will notice the previous clicks did not show even close to a match, so its pretty easy to determine which is the right manufacture and setup for your target gate. Now just click the right hand button on the remote and it should be configured with the gates setup even though you are in another location setting up for your test.

For Visual of the last signal comparison go to ./imageOutput/LiveComparison.png

----------Start Signals In Press--------------

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.05

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.14

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.12

----------End Signals In Press------------

For Visual of the last signal comparison go to ./imageOutput/LiveComparison.png

----------Start Signals In Press--------------

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.14

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.20

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.19

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.25

----------End Signals In Press------------

For Visual of the last signal comparison go to ./imageOutput/LiveComparison.png

----------Start Signals In Press--------------

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.93

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.97

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.90

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.88

Percent Chance of Match for press is: 0.44

----------End Signals In Press------------

For Visual of the last signal comparison go to ./imageOutput/LiveComparison.png

Graph Comparison Output for 97% Match:

Conclusion:

You have now walked through successfully reversing a toggle switch remote for a security gate. You took a raw signal and created a working device using only a Yardstick and RFCrack. This was just a quick tutorial on leveraging the skillsets you gained in previous blogs in order to learn how to analyze RF signals within embedded devices. There are many scenarios these same techniques could assist in. We also covered a few new features in RF crack regarding logging, graphing and comparing signals. These are just a few of the features which have been added since the initial release. For more info and other features check the wiki.

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Deb Home 4 U

Thursday, January 18, 2024

SolarMarker Malware Uses Novel Techniques To Persist On Hacked Systems

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Hacking Freemium Games - The Evolution Of PC Game Cheating

A little bit of history

The different types of cheats (on PC)

Cheat codes

Edit memory

Code injection

Saved game editor

Hacking game server

Network traffic hacking

Why cheating becomes more critical (and challenging)?

Freemium games

Hack all the freemium games!

Noob start

Beginners start - Cheat engine

Encrypt memory - applications at financial institutions

Moral of the story

Related news

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Hacking Everything With RF And Software Defined Radio - Part 3

Reversing Device Signals with RFCrack for Red Teaming

Contrived Scenario:

Items used in this blog:

Walkthrough Video:

Remotely sniffing signals for later analysis:

Recon:

RFCrack Scanning:

Example of logging output:

Analyzing the signal to determine toggle switches:

Let RFCrack Plot the Signal For you:

Possible toggle switch scenarios:

Configuring a remote:

Comparing Signals:

Open up 2 terminals and use the following commands:

Analyze Your Clicks:

Graph Comparison Output for 97% Match:

Conclusion: