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Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about reverse engineering. In this article, you will learn about OllyDbg, a debugger that is used to reverse engineer programs.

OllyDbg is an X86 debugger that is used to perform binary code analysis even when source code is not available. It can trace registers, switches, tables, constants, strings, recognize procedures, API calls and can even locate routines, object files and libraries. At present, this debugger can only disassemble binaries compiled for 32 bit processors.

Let’s see how this tool works. For this, I will be using Kali Linux as OllyDbg is available in its repositories.

Note that OllyDbg can only run on Windows systems. To run it on Kali, you need to install wine.

After wine is successfully installed, you can start Ollydbg using command shown below.

If it shows up wine error like this, just use the command shown below to fix it.

Now, OllyDbg should start normally. The interface looks as shown below.

To see the working of Ollydbg, we need an executable file to disassemble. To help you understand how OllyDbg works in detail, I have written a simple program in C. The program is nothing new. It just adds two numbers provided by the users and displays the result. I name it “hc_app.c”.

Then I compile it as shown below to get an exe file named “hc_app.exe”.

Let’s first check if the program works as expected.

The program “hc_app.exe” is working as expected. Now, let’s load this into OllyDbg. This can be done by dragging hc_app.exe to OllyDbg or by going to File menu>Open (F3) as shown below.

This will open file explorer.

Navigate to the location of the app we just created and select it.

Doing this will open a terminal as shown below.

Minimize the terminal window for now. After minimizing it, you will see this on OllyDbg.

If you are a normal human like me, you will not understand anything. This is assembly code. The interface of OllyDbg is divided into 4 sections.

The first section is CPU window. This contains all virtual addresses of instructions. This window is located to the upper left of OllyDbg.

The second section is located to the upper right of the program and contains CPU registers.

The third section is located to the lower left. This has data residing in memory.

The fourth section, located to the bottom right is the stack.

Apart from this, I have assigned number ‘5’ in yellow. It shows if the program we loaded (hc_app.exe) is paused or running. Before doing anything, go to the Debug menu and hit “Run”. Now, bring forward the the command window we minimized earlier. It will change to this.

That’s all good. Now, let’s make something sense out of what looks like gibberish. Right click inside the CPU window, a menu should open. Select “Search for” and in the sub menu “All referenced text strings” as shown below.

What we are doing is searching for all text strings referred to in the program. This will give output as shown below.

Here, you can see “Enter two integers:” and “The final number is :”. You remember something from the source code of the program. But note here that, we don’t have access to source code and only loaded the compiled program (hc_app.exe). To the left, highlighted in red, you can see the address at which this string is present. The address is “00401576”. Go to that address in CPU window.

See the disassembled code here. It is this.

The important thing here is the address “00411044”. Pointers in C point to a memory address. So, this command is pointing to a memory address “00411044”. Once again right click in CPU window select “Go to” this time and select “Expression” (shortcut for this is CTRL+G).

In the window that opens, enter address value as shown below and click on “OK”.

You should see this in CPU window. At address “00411044”, you should see a command “INC EBP”. Right click on that command and go to Binary>Edit as shown below.

A new window opens as shown below.

Observe the ASCII value. It is ‘E’. Similarly do it for next four commands.

Here are the combined ASCII values. They are ‘E’ ‘n’ ‘te’ ‘r’. What does it become? “Enter”.. I think you have figured out where this is going. This is part of the text, “Enter two integers:”. Right.

Now let’s do one thing. Change the ASCII value of ‘E’ ‘n’ ‘te’ ‘r’ to ‘H’ ‘E’ ‘LL’, ‘O’. respectively as shown below.

Now, when we go to debug menu and run the code again, instead of “Enter Two integers” we got “HELLO two integers” as shown below.

Here, you can see that we have successfully altered the code of a program without even knowing its source code. Next, learn how to perform static analysis of a program or malware with PEframe.

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost on Data link layer attacks, you learnt about various devices that are present in a LAN. You also learnt that one of the devices is a router. In this article, you will learn about Routersploit, a tool that is used to test security of a routers and other embedded devices in a LAN.

A router is a computer and networking device that forwards data between two different networks. For example, between internet and a LAN. A router is usually placed at the entrance of the network where the external network is connected. It is known as a gateway. In some cases, a router also acts as a firewall, IDS & IPS.

Routersploit framework is an open-source exploitation framework for embedded devices like routers. Let’s see how this tool works. For this, we will be using Kali Linux as our attacker system as routersploit is available by default on Kali repositories. As target system, we will be using IPFire (past version).

Routersploit can be started using the command shown below.

The interface of Routersploit is almost similar to Metasploit. So use command “use” and double press “Tab” button to see options of Routersploit.

Similar to Metasploit, Routersploit also has different modules divided based on the functions they perform. These are creds modules, exploit modules, payload modules, encoder modules, generic modules and scanner modules.

These are further divided into modules based on their sub functions. To see them, type any of the module type and once again hit tab two times. For example, let’s select scanner module.

As, you can see, different scanner modules are displayed. There are scanner modules for routers, cameras etc. You can select any module as shown below. For example, let’s select the autopwn module. The autopwn module of Routersploit tries all the exploits and modules it has on the target device and prints out the result.

Once you have chosen a module, use the “show options” command to see all the options this module needs. For example, the autopwn module just needs the target IP address. Set the target IP as shown below.

After setting all the options, just execute the module using command “run”. In the same manner, you can see and use different exploit modules on Routersploit.

If you know the make of target router, you can even search for all the exploit modules belonging to it. For example, let’s search for modules for our target router i.e IPfire.

In the above image you can see all the modules related to Ipfire. Let’s see if our IP fire target is vulnerable to shellshock vulnerability.

As you can see, the target is indeed vulnerable.

After setting all the options and executing the module, Routersploit successfully exploited the IP Fire shellshock vulnerability and exposed the /etc/passwd file of the target device.

Now, let’s see one of the credentials module.

This module I selected below, checks if our target IPfire is using default credentials for FTP service.

In this case, our target doesn’t expose FTP and hence is not vulnerable.

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogposts, you learnt what is steganography, its uses and how to hide secret data in an image using the tool Steghide. In this blogpost, you will learn about a tool that can retrieve this hidden data from an image. The tool’s name is Stegseek.

Although the working of Stegseek is same as Stegcracker, it is a lightning fast steghide cracker that is thousands of times faster than other crackers and can run through the entirety of rockyou.txt wordlist in under 2 seconds. Let’s see how this tool works. For this article, we will be using Kali Linux as our attacker system as this tool is installed by default on Kali Linux. For performing steganography attack, we will be using same image in which we have hidden data using Steghide, “Volcano_with_Secret,jpg”.

All you need to retrieve the hidden information from the image with this tool is to just supply the path of the image as shown below.

The “-sf” option stands for stego file. A stego file is a file that contains hidden information in it.

As you can see in the above image, Stegseek cracked the password (123456) of this file and successfully retrieved the hidden data. That too in lightning speed pace. The retrieved data from the image is saved in a file named <name of the file.jpg.out>. By default, Stegseek uses rockyou.txt wordlist to brute-force the password.

Specify a different wordlist (-wl)

We can even specify a different dictionary or wordlist if needed as shown below.

Select file name for extracting data (-xf)

As you already read at the beginning of this article, stegseek saves retrieved hidden data to a file named “<name-of-the-file>.out”. To extract the hidden data to a different fie, we can use this option. For example, let’s save the retrieved data to a file named “secret.txt” as shown below.

Overwrite existing file (-f)

In the above image, you can see that when we extracted hidden information to a file named “secret.txt”, we got prompted saying that there is already a file with the same name and if I wanted to overwrite it. Well, using this option, we can force overwrite already existing file.

Get detailed output (-v)

This option gives us detailed output while using Stegseek.

Quiet mode(-q)

On the contrary, you can run Stegseek in quiet mode. Running in this mode will just display the cracked password of the file as shown below and of course retrieve the hidden data. Status updates or other output is not displayed.

Skip defaults (-s)

Specifying this option skips adding default guesses while cracking like using an empty password, the name of the file etc to the wordlist.

Number of threads (-t)

By default, stegseek uses 4 threads while cracking the password. Increasing the number of threads can lead to better performance. Threads can be increased or decreased using this option. For example, let’s increase the number of threads to 10.

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogposts, you learnt what is steganography, it’s uses and how to hide secret data in an image using the tool Steghide. In this blogpost, you will learn about a tool that can retrieve hidden data from an image. The tool’s name is Stegcracker.

Stegcracker is a steganography brute-force utility to uncover hidden data inside files. Let’s see how this tool works. For this article, we will be using Kali Linux as our attacker system as this tool is available by default in its repositories. For performing steganography attack, we will be using same image in which we have hidden data using Steghide “Volcano_with_Secret,jpg”.

Check version (-v)

It is a good practice to check the version of the tool first before doing anything with the tool. You can check the version of Stegcracker using this option.

All you need to retrieve the hidden information from the image with this tool is to just supply the path of the image as shown below.

As you can see in the above image, Stegcracker cracked the password (123456) of this file and successfully retrieved the hidden data too. The retrieved data from the image is saved in a file named <name of the file.jpg.out>. By default, Stegcracker uses rockyou.txt wordlist to brute-force the password.

Specify a different wordlist

We can even specify a different dictionary or wordlist if needed as shown below.

Verbose output (-V)

This option can be used to get detailed output from stegcracker.

Quiet mode(-q)

On the contrary, you can run Stegcracker in quiet mode. Running in this mode will just display the cracked password of the file as shown below and of course retrieve the hidden data. Status updates or other output is not displayed.

Number of threads (-t)

By default, stegcracker user 16 threads while running. Increasing the number of threads can lead to better performance. Threads can be increased or decreased using this option. For example, let’s increase the number of threads to 32.

Saving the output (-o)

As you already read at the beginning of this article, stegcracker saves retrieved hidden data to a file named “<name-of-the-file>.out”. However this can be changed using the “-o” option.

For example, let’s save the retrieved data to a file named “secret.txt” as shown below.

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt how to use netcat for various purposes in ethical hacking. In this blogpost, you will learn about another such tool named Socat.

Socat, shortcut for SOcket CAT is a command line utility that enables bidirectional data transfer between two independent data channels. Actually, it can provide multiple functions. It supports many protocols like TCP, UDP, SOCKS4 and OpenSSL.

Bind and Reverse shells

The use of socat tool comes after you completed gaining access to target network or device. Here, it helps you in maintaining access as channel for communication.

Let’s see how to create bind shells with socat (learn about different types of shells). For this, we will be using Metasploitable2 as target system in our virtual hacking lab. Note that socat should be installed on both target and attacker systems for this to work. To create a bind shell, run this command on the target system as shown below.

Then on the attacker system, we need to run this command.

Here’s our bind shell.

To create reverse shell, the above commands should be run on attacker and target system respectively.

Here’s our reverse shell.

Encrypted bind and reverse shell with socat

The above shells, although they are good, the data between them is transferred in plain text and is susceptible to sniffing and detection. No problems though. Socat can create an encrypted shell using OpenSSL.

To create an encrypted shell, first, we need to create a SSL key as shown below. Two files with extensions “.crt” and “.key” are created as shown below.

Then, we need to join this two files into one file with “.pem” file as shown below.

Now this file should be on the system on which we start our listener. For example, to create a bind shell, the “ssl.pem” should be on the target system. Then we need to run command as shown below.

Then, on attacker system we should run this command shown below.

Here’s the shell.

Similarly, we can also create a reverse shell.

File transfer

Socat can also be used to transfer files between two machines. For example, to transfer that SSL certificate we created above from attacker system to target system, the command to be run on the attacker system is shown below.

Then on the target system, we should run this command.