Thursday, June 23, 2011

Scripting with Responder™ Community Edition

One of the most powerful features of Responder (all three versions, including the free Community Edition) is the ability to write custom plugins. The entire application is basically a GUI over an API. You have the ability to access this same API and extend the application in any way. HBGary hasn’t produced an official SDK document yet, so it’s best to learn by example. For this exercise, I am going to illustrate a plugin that ties information from Responder into Google maps.

First, you should become familiar with the object tree. The object tree (shown in the graphic below, point A) illustrates how the data is organized within Responder after a physical memory snapshot has been reconstructed. You can query any of this data directly using the Responder API’s. For example, you could query low-level details about running processes (point B).



For this example, we are going to query the open network sockets. These are reconstructed from internal undocumented structures within the kernel (the same ones used by tcpip.sys and afd.sys). Even if a rootkit is hooking netstat, the data would still be revealed in Responder. In our example, we have some outbound connections to China. Using our plug-in, we are going to read the connection data and plot the location of the registering entity using Google Maps.



To load the script, first go to the script TAB and select OPEN. Once open, the script will be visible in a code-editing window. Press the PLAY button to load the script.



As you can see, the script is written in C#. Almost all of the GUI components in Responder are written using C# and, for those who haven’t tried it, you will find it to be very similar to Java. The language is very easy to learn and use.
After we load the plugin, the list of network connections are obtained along with registration data. The address of the registration is then plotted on Google Maps.



When a plugin is loaded, the OnLoad function will be called with a list of all open “Documents”. In Responder, a “Document” is a container for data. The architecture requires that the user-interface be decoupled from the data. For those of you with programming experience, you may recognize the “Document/View” pattern here. At any rate, the list of open documents is passed into the OnLoad function and we need to locate the “NetworkBrowserDocument”. The network browser document has the list of all open sockets.


public bool OnLoad(ArrayList OpenDocuments)
{
try
{
// get the frame document, this allows us to add menu items and menu bars
_frame = FindMainWindow(OpenDocuments);

// see the Launch() subroutine to learn how to launch your own popup window
Launch();

// init the whois class for later use
_whois.ResponderForm = (Form)_frame.MainWindowInstance;
_whois.Inspector = FindInspector(OpenDocuments);
// the network browser document gives access to open sockets
_whois.Net = FindNetworkBrowserDocument(OpenDocuments);


For those who want to explore other documents, there are several example plugins that ship with Responder. For example, "StringsBrowserDocument" is responsible for showing lists of strings associated with a livebin. "SymbolsBrowserDocument" is responsible for symbols when a livebin has been disassembled (Responder PRO only). The "DriversBrowserDocument" has the list of detected device drivers.

In this plugin example, we have a helper function defined to locate the network browser document. Notice we use GetType() to locate the actual type of each document in the list. As stated, there are many different document types in Responder, usually one type for every visible window or panel in the application.


Logic.NetworkBrowserDocument FindNetworkBrowserDocument(ArrayList documents)
{
// note the use of IDocument interface class here,
// use GetType() to compare instanced type against Logic.XXXX where
// XXXX is the document type you are after. Use reflection to see the
// whole list...
foreach (IDocument doc in documents)
if (doc.GetType() == typeof(Logic.NetworkBrowserDocument))
return (Logic.NetworkBrowserDocument)doc;

return null;
}


After finding the network document we can use it to query the list of sockets. Documents will have custom methods and utility functions for dealing with specific data (these are all different depending on document type). You can also access the raw data directly, usually in the form of name/value pairs (my preferred way to do it). This is shown below. Each attribute has a specific name and type as shown.


ArrayList socks = _net.Sockets();

// all objects are referenced by GUID
foreach (Guid socketEntryID in socks)
{
// src and dest ip are stored as string
string source = _net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "sSource") as string;
string target = _net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "sDestination") as string;

// remember that 'i' is UNSIGNED
UInt32 sourcePort = (UInt32)_net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "iSourcePort");
UInt32 targetPort = (UInt32)_net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "iDestinationPort");

// the src and dest DNS names, obviously string as well
string sourcename = _net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "sSourceName") as string;
string destname = _net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "sDestinationName") as string;

// a bool stores whether the session is TCP or UDP
bool bTcp = (bool)_net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "bIsTCP");

string sockType = ((bool)(_net.ObjectName(socketEntryID, "bIsTCP"))) ? "TCP" : "UDP";


The socket list is stored as a list of object ID’s. Responder uses a GUID to identify every object in the project database. Every object that is found in the physical memory snapshot is assigned a GUID and can subsequently be looked up. In this example, we have a list of objects which represent sockets. The object ID can then be used to query additional attributes. In this example we query “sSource” “sDestination” “iSourcePort” etc. This is the generic attribute naming system used by Responder. The prefix is a type. ‘s’ means string, ‘i’ means integer, 'b' means bool. There are hundreds of these named attributes across the application - something I hope HBGary writes an SDK document for soon.

After obtaining the source and destination IP’s, our example plugin has a Whois class that is used to lookup the name and address of the registrar. This data is then passed to a browser control along with the URL for Google Maps so the location will be mapped on the right.

This plugin could be extended in many ways. For example, a geoip database or service like ip2location could be used to locate the missile-coordinates for a specific IP address, as opposed to the registration data. The plugin could also be extended to extract IP addresses from artifacts in memory, as opposed to active connections in the socket list. For example, IP address fragments stored in tagged page pool memory.

The plugin is open source and can be downloaded from HBGary’s support site.

Cheers,
-Greg

Ps. Thanks to Dean, the HBGary engineer who wrote this plugin

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Changing APT Tactics: Remote-Access Tools vs. Stolen Credentials

Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) are adaptive, their tactics will cycle after an intrusion takes place. For example, an APT group may start to lean away from RATs (remote-access tools) and rely more on stolen credentials. Let me explain.

An APT initially will enter the network via malware, typically through spear-phishing. Once on the compromised host, the threat actor will place one or more RATs into the environment. If we pick up RATs with our Digital DNA solution or another indicator, we start hunting them down.  After targeting and removing these RATs in the customer environment, we have found that specific malware will last about a week, maybe two, before the APT drops it altogether and switches tactics to remain in the network. We commonly see APT shift to using stolen credentials and no malware at all.

Stolen credentials are the very currency of APT. As it turns out, it’s much harder to detect malicious users than to detect RATs. In fact, the APT will use these accounts the same way a legitimate admin would – making it very hard to tell the difference. They create file shares,  use the ADMIN$ share, and defrag the hard drive. APTs will even update the AV and patch the machine. Of course, the defrag is actually a way to cover up forensic evidence on the drive, and the ADMIN$ is a way to laterally move malware and tools between machines. One would think that upgrading the AV would be counter to an APT’s self preservation. Actually, the APT updates it purely for self preservation – to appear “normal” as a legitimate admin.

At this point in the investigation, in terms of malware, we are still picking up a great deal of material – but not RATs. When the APT shifts to credentials, we start to pick up password sniffers and keyloggers that have no outside network capability. The malware in this case is entirely focused on obtaining more credentials. Finally, once the customer updates all the passwords, one or more RATs pop out of the woodwork and the cycle repeats itself.