Tips For Being An Interviewee In InfoSec

A Few Notes Before We Begin

1. This post is incredibly biased as I'm a white male that looks like the massive nerd I am - with a dash of  survivorship bias
2. I've also only really had offensive roles 
1. Minus some engineering work, largely writing tools for other people to use and weaponizing vulnerabilities
3. This is an attempt to explain the way I interview, as I'm told I interview rather well
4. Not super happy with the format and would love suggestions - it feels a bit like a brain dump that is somewhat categorized currently

That said - Hopefully this is helpful for somebody :)!

Determine Your Total Compensation #

https://www.levels.fyi/ is a good starting place to help gauge salary bands for the company you're interested in. Ask around in your network to see if you can get an idea of what to ask for. However, know as you approach more senior levels your salary largely caps <= 300k and your stock compensation is what continues to grow. It's also important to keep in mind that this is for larger companies - smaller companies simply can't compete with FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, Microsoft) or even mid-size technology companies on salary, but typically have other non financial benefits that FAANG's would love to have.

Decide What You Want

Before I start interviewing anywhere, I list out and prioritize what I'm after. For me currently, it's the ability to participate in specific bug bounties, stock options, and remote work. I'm in the incredibly privileged position to work remote in one of the cheapest places to live in the US, so salary is not a main concern of mine. 

Don't forget, EVERYTHING can be negotiable, but it doesn't mean the company you're applying to is WILLING to negotiate on said item. Example include, but aren't limited to: how many days you work, vacation days, research time, when you come and leave, taking naps during the day - I used to work with a person who took a 1 hour nap from 2-3PM everyday, and they loved it - getting classes/conferences/training paid for. Figure out what's valuable to you and ask for it. Nothing is wrong with being money driven, or by something else. Many companies will only negotiate on salary, and not allow things such as extra vacation. I recommend converting your vacation days to a dollar amount in these instances, making sure it's more than your "Daily rate" (salary / 2080) to compensate you for the lack of time away from the job. 

You've probably heard the saying, "the worst thing they can say is no". Unfortunately that's not really true - companies are made up of humans, and we are flawed. There are tons of stories out there, such as https://twitter.com/ChloeCondon/status/1279128748365766657, for you to get an idea for shit companies will try to pull. You should 100% run away from these situations if you're treated this way - you dodged a bullet before investing too much time in a company that doesn't deserve you.

Rank Your Priorities

You would think knowing what you want and your priorities would be the same; however, some things will always be more important than others. For me, my current priority list is:

1. Remote
2. Stock options/RSUs/etc
3. Vacation
4. Salary

Knowing what's important to you ahead of time has helped me the most when it comes time to negotiate. This will change as things in your life change, or it might not. There is no right or wrong way to do this, but it is important to do this. Managing expectations throughout the interview process is a huge component of successfully getting an offer. And it is much easier to manage your expectations when you have clearly defined them for yourself!

Figure Out Your Interview Cadence

I personally try to interview or at least chat with companies every 6-8 months. This is one way I make sure the skills I'm looking to develop and have developed are useful to companies on the market. It's also best to interview when you don't really need a job, as it makes negotiating more in your favor due to the fact that walking away is not as painful - at least from a financial perspective.

Know When to Walk Away

Just like buying a car, you have to be willing to walk away. There are lots of jobs out there, and unless it's your dream job or they're solving a problem you're interested in, walk away if something is off. For example, during the interview you ask about the "sexual harassment problem plaguing the company" and they state they won't discuss it with you without lawyers present and become combative for the rest of the interview. In my experience even really interesting problems become significantly less interesting when you're miserable because of company/team culture.

Completing Challenges

It's up to you as to how much time you put it to challenges, however I typically limit it to 3 hours over a weekend, and submit how far I get. I talk about what I would've tried, and what I would do next. For example, several infosec consultancies have CTF style challenges, where a flag, file, or a certain level of access is requested by the company you're interviewing for. I chose 3 hours, or ~$1000 worth of my free time. I have side projects / passion projects that I'm working on that are higher priority than a job.

Thankfully most companies do this better than they used to, but plenty still do this. Unfortunately for them they will lose out on people who know what they're worth. I've also had a company actually pay me for doing an in depth CTF for their interview, which was a lot of fun and hopefully they learned something! However, I've had a company pay me for my time once in probably 40ish interviews I've had over the last 7 years. 

Of course, every rule has to have exceptions, and this one has for me a few times. I once broke this rule once for a protocol challenge, simply because it was different and fun!

Prepping For In Person Interviews

This boils down to one thing: research. I always bring a legal pad, with 1 page to ask generic questions to everyone, and then 1 page per person / persons interviewing me that I'll want to ask specifically about their job function, how I'll interact with them,  generic questions about the company, and some of my goals. If a company doesn't offer up front who is interviewing, it can't hurt to ask. Worse case, they tell you they won't know and then you'll want to come up with some generic questions.

I always spend some time on Glassdoor to read reviews from people, but take everything with a giant grain of salt, as there are always "three sides" to every story. 

You should be familiar with the companies goals and values, as well as what responsibilities you will have. If you can't speak confidently to your ability to fulfill the role, practice. In front of a mirror, with a friend, or at a con. Several cons do mock interviews, as do several slacks. If none of that is possible, practice by doing an interview at a company you're not really wanting to work at.

It's always a good idea to talk to your hiring manager, recruiter, or whomever you're point of contact is about your expectations around your wants, and getting feedback on what's possible. Letting them know what you're looking for at a high level will help with expectations come negotiation time. 

Negotiating
If you get here, congrats! If not, keep on going, everyone is practically always hiring. Regardless of whether an offer is made or not, try and get some feedback from the company on how you interviewed. While many will say they can't give you any, every now and then you will get some feedback, which should help you for your next interview, however long away it is.

If you were given an offer, now is where your wants and priorities are used. Hopefully you've asked the right people the right questions, and they are aware of what your expectations are.

You Are Going To Be Passed Up On

At some point you are not going to get an offer / going to be outright rejected. Maybe you didn't get along with one of the interviewers, maybe you blew a question that they rate highly as an indicator of a good hire. Maybe your research was off, or maybe the interviewer simply didn't like you. It happens to everyone, and is definitely expected. If possible, get as much feedback as possible from the company, though many will simply refuse to provide feedback that is useful. 

Regardless of the outcome (AND assuming nothing egregious happened), BE POLITE AND THANK THEM FOR THEIR TIME. It costs you nothing to be kind and will do nothing but help you in the future. Yes it sucks being rejected, and your ego will take a hit, but like most things in life you have to dust yourself off, learn from your mistake(s), and try again. Soon enough you'll be used to being told "We've decided to go another direction" like most of us!

Breaking into infosec with: Web applications

Are you wanting to break into InfoSec (Information Security) but you aren't sure where to start? If web applications, red teaming, or pentesting (The latter two are out of scope for this post - but I think the fundamentals here are important) sounds up your alley then hopefully this word spaghetti will be useful for you! 

Who am I

At the time of writing I am a Practice Manager for Leviathan Security Group. My role largely involves training up new consultants for web and mobile application security, as well as get them started on the road to being pentesters (if they so desire). If I'm not doing that I'm hacking stuff: From mobile operating systems to thick client apps to (predominantly) web applications. I've been hacking for most of my life - though nowadays I focus on iOS/MacOS/Android/browsers in my spare time.

Caveats

While I am going to talk about what worked for me and people who I have mentored, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. That's ok! We all learn in different ways, the important thing is to take what you can use, discard the rest, and hopefully pass that knowledge onto someone else who thinks more like you! Passing on that knowledge is key to helping lift other people up into the industry. 

I am also a massive nerd who LOVES hacking stuff. I would do it for fun - I'm incredibly lucky to have been born in a time when the thing I love to do pays super well. If you're here to just get a check - I respect that - this is a fantastic way to do it (I would argue there are better ways but this is definitely one of the more fun ones IMO :D). 

Finally, I've predominantly been at consulting companies for my day job. I personally enjoy it but it is definitely not for everyone. I would submit that the ability to take a look at a wide range of technologies quickly has helped me a ton, but that is another discussion or post if there's interest.

Why I chose web and think you should too

1. No hardware really required besides a laptop, so remote is much easier 
2. Who doesn't have a website/web app nowadays

This meant as long as I could always reliably find web bugs and keep myself up to date on the latest techniques, I'd have a job! In my book this is a good thing. Some people might say that web is a lot more boring or not as cool as finding memory corruption vulnerabilities, but ignore the haters because they're wrong :). We need people who do both to protect users, their data, and companies.

Before we get started, we need to set some goals

Don't just take my word for it - read this kick ass blog post by Azeria here. It's a great methodology for how to help you help yourself.  (Note: if you're interested in binary exploitation, she has other fantastic articles and walkthroughs, all of which are 11/10.) 

I suggest having two sets of goals, which we'll break down next.

First set of goals: Learning how to learn for your future

There are a few things required to be really good at finding bugs: Asking "Why", "How", and following this up with digging in to gain an understanding about what you're looking at. For instance, let's say you're looking at SQL injection: Why does the string ' or 1=1--' let you login as an administrative user on the web application you're hacking? 

Once you can answer the why (String concatenation being used to construct the query) you  then need to be able to answer the how: Not only for how the exploit works, but also how the remediation works as well. For SQL injection - we use parameterized queries, but how do they work, and what do you do when you can't use parameterzied queries? (This is left as an exercise for the reader)

Memorization of facts can be helpful for very junior positions, but eventually a better understanding will be required, and getting the motions down for how you do that is vital to a long and successful career. 

Detour: Resources to use

I personally learn best by getting hands on practice, and is usually what I recommend others try as well. here are some free and legal resources:

1. Burpsuite(AKA Burp)
1. This is THE tool basically everyone uses - it is good to learn the free version as it makes a lot of things easier when you start your first job
2. OWASP Top 10
1. This is a link to the OWASP Top 10 - a list of the top 10 most common security flaws found in web applications
3. Portswigger labs
1. This is where you can learn about these different flaws and actively exploit them using your browser and Burp
4. Natas - A wargame on OverTheWire
1. This is like #3, except it's non guided and a good way to learn and build up your skills and confident

Second set of goals: Learning web

Coming up with your own short term goals is ideal, however here are some to get you started:

• Be comfortable using Burp - intruder + repeater + proxy are the main three 
• #3 has tons of guides for this, and you will get practice while doing #3 and #4
• Pick 2-3 items in the OWASP Top Ten and be able to do the following: 
• Describe the issue in your own words
• Ex: "SQL Injection occurs when string concatenation is used to construct a SQL query"
• Discuss how you find them
• Ex: "You can search for SQL injection vulnerabilities using special SQL characters, such as ',", and more".
• Discuss how you exploit them
• Ex: "The common academic example of a payload containing SQL injection is '1 OR 1=1--'. More generically, you exploit these type of vulnerabilities by using the user controlled input to modify the SQL query being used by the application"
• Discuss how you remediate them. 
• Ex: "Use parameterized queries where possible"
• Getting to level 11 Natas
• This helps you gain more familiarity with Burp, and web apps in general. These first levels largely teach basic concepts, as it's misconfigurations and simple bugs that are doable without burp
• I'd highly recommend not cheating and looking up walkthroughs for any wargames if possible. 
• Hints are fine, but in my experience part of the learning experience is figuring it out on your own. This is what usually makes me have that "AHA!" moment, where things finally click together. 

Case Study

Recently someone I've been guiding through getting into Infosec was putting some example reports together to show potential companies that he was serious. (Companies looking to hire - I will gladly pass on contact info if you're interested in hiring him). 

Here's a snippet from one of his example reports:

Example report from someone trying to break into infosec

There are several positives here that are highlighted, and several things that aren't highlighted that are also positive. Let's start with the highlighted positives (In order from top to bottom):

1. The vulnerability is ranked with CVSS 3.1
1. He took the time to figure out how one bug severity rating system, while providing the data of how he arrived at the numbers (not shown in screenshot). 
2. Is it super relevant? No but it shows he cared enough to find something that would fit his needs. Sometimes you have to find something "Good enough" for your current task
2. The remediation advice is solid for an entry level position
1. IMO it is pretty generic, but that's what you'd expect from an entry level applicant
3. (Not shown) the images say what he said it says, and do not look photo shopped 
1. At previous employer, one of our competitors used to photoshop screenshots to use as proof of exploitation. They did not last long.

Other positives:

1. Grammar and flow is decent - this is important as we write TONS of reports
2. Description explains why the developer should care about the bug: You can login as admin!

Of course, there are some issues with this as well:

1. There are steps to reproduce, but you have to somewhat read between the lines. Creating a "Steps to reproduce" section will be helpful for someone to quickly validate you did what you said you did
2. There is no demonstrated understanding of the vulnerability
1. The report states that there is a SQL injection vulnerability. However, there is no explanation of why the payload works. I can't derive that you understand what SQL injection is by reading this report, which you will want companies to be able to do. 
2. There is no description of what SQL injection is: The report describes why a developer should care (See #2 above), but doesn't describe what the actual vulnerability is.

Overall, I think with a bit of finessing, making the changes above, and practicing some more on natas or the Portswigger labs he'll be on his way to getting his first infosec job.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there - feel free to reach out with other questions / comments and I'll try to help you out!

Exploiting memory corruption bugs in PHP Part 3: Popping Remote Shells

This took longer than expected, but it's a journey worth taking! This is less descriptive than other blog posts, because I'd like to try the video format out once. AKA, I'm lazy :)

Disappointingly for some, this will be a guide to create a POC. See the video at the end for what a my automated & remote exploit looks like, as well as tips & tricks to get things working in a real environment.

I kept the app stupid to make life easy. It literally attempts to serialize whatever data is sent to the page, after base64_decoding it. More complicated exploits will require a little more fines :).

We need a way to execute arbitrary PHP code. Sure, we could try to inject shellcode, but that's not very creative, and much noisier than executing arbitrary PHP code (Also impossible in newer versions of PHP, unless it's very tiny). If you recall from Part 1, to execute code, we need to call php_execute_script AND zend_eval_string. However, since we're going to be attacking "remotely", we also need to find the executor_globals, and the JMP_BUF. More on those later.

In short, we need to find (In no particular order):

• executor_globals
• zend_eval_string
• JMP_BUF
• A way to write arbitrary data to the stack

Thankfully, some of these we can find relatively quickly, since they're in the binary. Let's go ahead and dump the String table of the PHP binary.



Great! Let's go ahead and start pulling addresses from it as well, and verifying that those addresses are correct in GDB.

Finding zend_eval_string's address

GDB showing that the address is legitimate

Finding executor_global's address

GDB showing that the address is legitimate

Awesome! Now, how do we find JMP_BUF? Well, while reading the source code for the _zend_executor_globals object, we find an interesting piece of information. A JMP_BUF pointer, called bailout. Let's look at this in GDB, and see if the address is useful.

Printing the _zend_executor_globals object

A better way to check the value of bailout

Well, we have an address, but what does this address point to? Is it even useful? Well, in PHP, JMP_BUF is used as a type of "try{} - catch{}" at the C level, but more on this later.

We're now only lacking one thing: A way to inject the malicious string onto the stack. Stefan's method in the 2010 Syscan talk will be discussed further in this blog post. Since we won't be freeing arbitrary memory addresses, what's the next best thing we could do? We could write to the stack, but how? And how do we guarantee that it won't be overwritten in the future? (Google is your friend here ;) ).

An RFC, specifically RFC1867.

This RFC allows POST requests with the multipart/form-data to set stack buffers, which aren't overwritten by PHP completely (due to a number of reasons). Let's try this out by posting "the usual" in a file. 

Awesome! We can write whatever we want to the stack now. But what do we want to write?

Hint: It's what we found earlier :)

Since we spent all this time figuring out what was where, we should probably use that! So, how do we lay it out? After some investigating, we need the stack to look like this:

Starting with the easy ones: We already have Zend_Eval String, since we found it earlier with readelf. Both the Ret Pointer and Zend_Bailout can be garbage, since we don't care about either of them (This will cause PHP to crash either way, without making the exploit more complicated). We can set the pointer_to_eval_string both times since we control the stack. So, here's what we have data on now:

• POP; RET - ?????
• XCHG EAX, ESP; RET - ????
• Zend_Eval_String - 0x082da150
• Zend_Bailout - 0x00000000
• Pointer_To_Eval_String - 0xbfffda04
• Ret Pointer - 0x00000000
• Pointer_To_Eval_String - 0xbfffda04

Sweet! We have most of this already filled in, excellent! Unfortunately, it looks like we need some ROP gadgets. I prefer to use ROPGadget myself, but any gadget finding tool should suffice. We need to find XCHG EAX, ESP; RET (0x94 0xc3), and we also need to find POP EBP; RET (0x5d 0xc3). Once you have those gadgets, you're good to go! Let's go ahead and give it a shot!

Awesome! Now that we have these two locations (Why are the addresses so different? These are offsets!), we can complete the stack as follows:

• POP; RET - 0x000e8e68
• XCHG EAX, ESP; RET - 0x000057b7
• Zend_Eval_String - 0x082da150
• Zend_Bailout - 0x00000000
• Pointer_To_Eval_String - 0xbfffda04
• Ret Pointer - 0x00000000
• Pointer_To_Eval_String - 0xbfffda04

Now that we have a complete view on how we want the stack to look, it's time to test this bad boy out. So, let's get to it! 

Hmmm, that didn't work out quite as expected, now did it? In fact, that looks like our code is trying to jump to our gadget (c394). Unfortunately, there's one more thing you have to know. There's a special object that's required for these gadgets to be useful without crashing PHP, otherwise the gadget's aren't useful at all. I'll save you the trouble of guessing/digging around in old code to figure it out. The object you need is SPLObjectStorage. Knowing this, we'll have to reformat all of our attacks from before. Once we have done that, then get the following after running through our exploit again, as shown below:

Screenshot taken from fully automated Python exploit. See video for details

This is my stopping point for this method, as it only affects older versions of php (With these same gadgets). For newer versions of PHP, keep reading :).

Fortunately not much changes. Recall that we looked up the address of php_execute_script AND the jmp_buf. We'll need both for this version of the exploit. 

jmp_buf is used by setjmp & longjmp, and saves the "environment" in case of an "unrecoverable" error. The jmpbuf is different depending on your architecture. For 32 bit, this is an unsigned array with 6 ints. If you're on 64 bit, there are 8 ints. Unfortunately, due to how this is implemented, there will be some digging in source code required for you to determine which position the registers are in within the jmp_buf. Here's an example of the jmp_buf layout. Of course, let's see how this looks in PHP...

Great! For my machine, the order of registers are: ebx, esp, ebp, esi, edi, eip. Since things worth doing in life aren't easy, this of course isn't a simple search! It looks like our edi & eip register are obfuscated. How're they obfuscated? By Glibc of course! Glibc has a macro called PTR_MANGLE. In the video we'll discuss how we crack the JMPBUF. 

Once we have it cracked, we need a way to overwrite and free memory. Thankfully, the same object (SPLObjectStorage) allows us to free memory remotely. All that's left is writing data to the stack. Just like in Part 2, we abuse the memory caching of PHP. We free some memory, write a small 7 byte string to fill it, and when php overwrites part of our data, we do it again. This 2nd overwriting allows us to write an arbitrarily amount of data on the stack (I did not test for values over 2048). This data that we want to write is very similar to what we used in the previous ROP example. We of course need to "encrypt" our values for PTR_MANGLE. Here's some example output:

With that said, here's the video!

NOTES FOR THE VIDEO: 

x86 Instruction Chart - http://sparksandflames.com/files/x86InstructionChart.html

Elf Header lowest 3 bits are 000

Elf layout - http://geezer.osdevbrasil.net/osd/exec/elf.txt

PMAP is your friend when trying to find the "Magic"

A look at PTR_MANGLE http://hmarco.org/bugs/CVE-2013-4788.html

Stay tuned for some iOS fun ;)

Exploiting memory corruption bugs in PHP (CVE-2014-8142 and CVE-2015-0231) Part 2: Remote Exploitation

In Part 1, we figured out how to locally exploit CVE-2014-8142 and CVE-2015-0231. In Part 2, we'll discuss remotely exploiting this vulnerability, and what we can steal from the application using the methods we discover. However, we will be focusing solely on CVE-2015-0231. Feel free to make the necessary changes as outlined in Part 1 to get CVE-2014-8142 working.

If you recall, Esser gave us code that leaked data at a non-attacker controlled address, which is shown below.

While this is useful, it's not as useful as the script we just wrote! We want to leak arbitrary memory remotely, not just random and basically useless memory. To do this, we need a way to:

1. Write arbitrary data (without crashing PHP)
2. Read arbitrary data (without crashing PHP)

As with anything in life, it's easier to tackle these problems one at a time! So, let's start with #1. We can write whatever we want, since we're sending our own object. However, we need a way to write useful information. Here's our last example:

We'll want to focus on the $fakezval variable. Is there someway we could write this zval remotely within a serialized object?? (Hint: It's a "feature" :D!)

As an aside, don't be stupid and lazy like I was. Read ALL of the code you're working on and around. I wasted a good 5-6 hours trying to figure this part out, until I face-punched myself a for missing this obvious portion of code.

Thankfully, there is, the 'S' character. The S character in a serialized string allows us to serialize and unserialize binary data. Let's play around with an S object, to get a better feel for how it works and how we can abuse it!

And let's go ahead and run our code, so we can see the awesomeness!

Hmm, this isn't exactly awesome. We're clearly doing something wrong here. To save everyone some face-palming, this error has to do with our S object, but feel free to count out the bytes by hand! And yes, I know PHP error messages suck.

In a normal serialized string, such as s:3:"123", the integer 3 is the number of characters that the string contains. However, in our above code, we have S:43:"\00\01\00\00AAAA\00\01\01\00\01\00\0B\BC\CC", which also has an integer (43), which is the length of our string, right?

Well, not exactly. We're not wanting a literal string here, we're wanting PHP to interpret this as binary data, as our string isn't actually 43 characters long, but 17. Let's try changing 43 to 17.

Excellent! But why did we use 17? Well, each \xx is considered to be 1 "character", which would leave us with 13. The "AAAA" characters are considered normal characters, so we add 4 to account for these. In short: Each \xx "triplet" is considered one character. Ok, now we can send this string, but how do we get information from the interpreter?

Before we leak arbitrary addresses, let's try to learn more about the server itself, as this will help us write a more reliable exploit (More on this in Part 3). To start, let's learn how to determine endianness of the server. To do so, we'll use a fake integer zval.

The idea stays the same:

• Create an array of integers
• Free the array we just created
• Create our string from the previous example
• Point to the reference of an integer that we just freed

Why use an integer zval instead of a string? Well, if you recall the zval struct, an integer will look like the following:

• We set the value of the integer
• 00 01 00 00
• In Little Endian, this is 0x100
• In Big Endian, this is 0x1000
• We then fill the next 8 bytes with junk
• 41 41 41 41 (Or: AAAA)
• The next 8 bytes are the reference counter
• 00 01 01 00
• The final 8 bytes are 01 (Type Integer) and then we fill the rest with junk
• 01 00 bc cc

 Putting this all together gives us our "S" value! But how does it tell us the endianness of the server? Well, in the server response, if it returns 0x100 (256), we'll know it's little endian! If it returns 65536, we'll know it's big endian! Let's see it in action:

And the application response:

Excellent! We now know the endianness of the server! Of course, we're trying to leak arbitrary data still, so let's figure that part out next. Since we can successfully leak data we supplied, is it possible to leak data at an arbitrary address?

Since the blog didn't stop here, it is assumed the answer is yes! However, instead of a fake integer zval, we'll use a fake string zval instead, which will look like the following:

• We set the pointer to our string data
• 00 80 04 08
• We set the length of the string that we wish to extract (1024)
• 00 04 00 00
• We set the reference count to be not zero (0x101)
• 00 01 01 00
• Finally, we set the type to string, and fill the rest with junk
• 06 00 0b bc

Here's what our new script looks like:

And when we run it, we get:

Excellent! We can now dump arbitrary memory, but we're required to know the address, which isn't practical. How do we extract addresses remotely? We could use the code from Part 1 to leak addresses, but the data leaked there isn't pointing to anything significant. Is there some other mechanism we can abuse to extract information?

Thankfully, there is! See the code below:

And when we run it:

Now, this is a rather big array, so let's break it down. The general idea is:

• Create Integer Array #1
• This will empty the memory cache
• Create Integer Array #2
• Fill in the variable table
• Free Integer Array #2
• Free spots in the variable table
• Create an array of objects mixed with the S object
• Free that Array of mixed objects
• See comment below
• Point to an integer value in Array #2 that was freed and overwritten
• Response contains valuable data

We free the Object array so that the first 4 bytes in the array are overwritten by memory cache, since it was just freed (and therefore available for writing). In doing so, the string pointer (Which was previous 0x41414141) now points to the previously freed memory object. TL;DR - We get legit addresses!

But which addresses do we want? We're looking for the address that proceeds: "\x00\x00\x00\x00\x05\x00". This will be an object handler address, which is a struct in the data segment. Now, we can read the entire object handler table, and get information into the code segment of PHP(which is what we're interested in, since we want to pop a shell).

Here's the command to see the hex values returned by PHP

cphp newLeak.php | xxd -ps | sed 's/[[:xdigit:]]\{2\}/\\x&/g'

Let's go ahead and let it run, and when we grep for "\x00\x00\x00\x00\x05\x00", we find the following address:



If we load this into GDB, we also see that it is in fact a pointer into our object handler. Don't forget to set a breakpoint (I set one in var_unserializer.c:337) before running!

And what we see is:

Before we get too excited, let's make sure these are actually pointing to interesting things, let's just take the first entry: 0x0830a640. Here's what's stored at this address:

Awesome! We can now see everything that we need to! Thanks to these methods, we can now steal:

• The entire PHP binary (and it's data)
• SSL Certs (via mod_ssl)
• PHP Symbols
• Addresses of other modules (and their data as well)

Stay tuned for Part 3, where we pop a shell! This technique can also be used for CVE-2015-0273, as well as other UAF exploits in PHP.

Part 3 will take a while longer to get out, as I need to play around with PHP some more (and do some reading) before I can finish the exploit. But it will come!

Exploiting memory corruption bugs in PHP (CVE-2014-8142 and CVE-2015-0231) Part 1: Local Exploitation

Update: Part 2 here!

Many people don't consider memory corruption bugs to be an issue for web-based applications. With XSS and SQL injection still being so wide spread, there is little room for concern for these types of bugs, as they're written off as "unexploitable" or plain ignored. However, these types of attack are much worse than SQLi or XSS, as

• The attacker gets guaranteed system access
• It can be difficult to identify the malicious traffic
• Requires a patch from the maintainer/vendor, and with the hope that it was patched correctly. 

This post will be the first post in a three part series, starting with how to exploit CVE-2014-8142(and CVE-2015-0231), followed by remotely leaking arbitrary information, and ending with getting control of the PHP Interpreter. Stefan Esser(@i0n1c) is the security researcher who originally found both CVEs, and was also the first one to talk about controlling the PHP Interpreter(dubbed ret2php) at SyScan 2010.

This all starts back in 2004, when Esser found a Use After Free (#7) in unserialize(). This was part of the Hardened-PHP project, and no code was ever publicly released. In 2010, Esser found another use after free in SPLObjectStorage's unserialize(), which lead to a presentation at Syscan. Again, no code was released. Finally, CVE-2014-8142 was found and patched, but not patched correctly, which lead to CVE-2015-0231.

Luckily, Stefan provided us a POC that seg faults the interpreter. The following code will produce a seg fault on vulnerable versions of PHP.

Here's how it works: we update the value(s) associated with the "aaa" object by adding it again (with different values) within the same object. Next, the "ccc" object must point to the one of the values within the original "aaa" object.

Now that we know how it works at a high level, let's try and find the culprit. We know to look in process_nested_data, and after a quick glance, a certain section stands out:

Let's step through the script to identify what's actually happening here. We'll want a break on line 337 in var_unserializer.c (which is within the process_nested_data function).

Let's go ahead and step through the code found here:

Once we run the above script, continue past the first break point. Once in the second break point, run the following command

printzv *(var_entries*)var_hash->first

And we'll get an array of addresses, which are pointing to variables that have been parsed by unserialize(). We're interested in the fifth one (As our code uses R:5). Now that we know what address to watch, let's go ahead and step through this break point.

Since we've called the suspect function, let's go ahead and re-check our address that we selected above:

Success! However, let's make sure our address is still in the var_hash list, and then continue executing.

And when we continue:

Sweet! We can leak the data at the previous address. So, we can now leak the length of the supplied string. But that's not interesting. What about leaking arbitrary memory? Here's the code:

And here's the output:

What we're doing here is (hopefully) straightforward. We're creating our own ZVAL, which is the internal data struct that PHP uses. We define a few things for the pack() function to get our code execution. In order, they are:

1. Type (unsigned int in our case)
2. Address (The address we'd like to start the leak from)
3. Length (How much memory we'd like to leak)
4. # of References (0)
5. Data Type (6, for String)

Of course, these values would change if we weren't faking a string ZVAL. Our for loop does the actual overwriting of the freed memory, which leads us to the above output. I left the $i value larger than usually needed, to make sure it works "everywhere", but most of the machines I've tested on are fine with 2 instead of 5 iterations.

Well, now that we can leak random data, how about upgrading to CVE-2015-0231? It's simple: Just replace "aaa" with "123". See the resulting output below:

Excellent! Now we have a working local POC that can leak arbitrary memory, for both CVEs. Our next goal is to do this same thing, only remotely. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we do just that!