Jonathan Brossard ClubHack 2008

Reverse Engineering for exploit

writers

Jonathan Brossard, iViZ Research Team

Clubhack 2008

Pune, India

Who Am I ?

(and why am I writing this ??)

We are recruting ! Send me your CVs at :

[email protected]

Roadmap

•A (short) reminder of the ELF file format

•Introducing the problem

•How (not) to work with proprietary binaries anyway ?

•What to rebuild ?

•Refactoring the binary

•Refactoring in practice

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A (short) reminder of the ELF format

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A(short)reminderofthe ELF format

The ELF header : (mandatory)

typedef struct {
unsigned char e_ident[EI_NIDENT];
Elf32_Half	e_type;
Elf32_Half	e_machine;
Elf32_Word	e_version;
Elf32_Addr	e_entry;
Elf32_Off	e_phoff;	// offset to Program		Header Table
Elf32_Off	e_shoff;	// offset to Section		Header Table
Elf32_Word	e_flags;
Elf32_Half	e_ehsize;
Elf32_Half	e_phentsize;
Elf32_Half	e_phnum;
Elf32_Half	e_shentsize;		// size of a section header
Elf32_Half	e_shnum;		// number of section headers
Elf32_Half	e_shtrndx;		// offset of associated string table

} Elf32_Ehdr;

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A(short)reminderofthe ELF format

Program Headers : (mandatory, one per segment)

typedef struct {
Elf32_Word	p_type; // Segment type (Alocate ? Null ?
Dynamic ? …)
Elf32_Off	p_offset; // offset in file
Elf32_Addr p_vaddr;
Elf32_Addr p_paddr;
Elf32_Word	p_filesz; // length in file
Elf32_Word p_memsz;
Elf32_Word p_flags;
Elf32_Word	p_align;
} Elf32_Phdr;

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A(short)reminderofthe ELF format

Section Headers : (optional, one per section)

typedef struct
{
Elf32_Word	sh_name;// index in string table
Elf32_Word	sh_type; // type of section
Elf32_Word	sh_flags;
Elf32_Addr sh_addr;
Elf32_Off sh_offset;
Elf32_Word	sh_size;
Elf32_Word	sh_link;
Elf32_Word	sh_info;
Elf32_Word	sh_addralign;
Elf32_Word	sh_entsize;
} Elf32_Shdr;

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A(short)reminderofthe ELF format

Symbols : (the Symbol table is an array of Elf32_sym)

typedef struct

{

Elf32_Word st_name; Elf32_Addr st_value; Elf32_Word st_size; unsigned char st_info; unsigned char st_other; Elf32_Section st_shndx;

} Elf32_Sym;

//Symbol name (string tbl index)

//Symbol value

//Symbol size

//Symbol type and binding

//Symbol visibility

//Section index

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Introducingtheproblem

•Proprietary binaries are commonly modified to make the job of security analysts difficult:

-Sometimes packed (out of topic)

-Usually don’t have a symbol table (stripped)

-More and more have a missing/corrupted Section Header Table (sstripped, a la sstrip from elfkickers…) and/or zeroed Section Headers.

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Introducingtheproblem

Before :

- We know where the Segments are

- We know where the Sections are located

- The application has a symbol table

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Introducingtheproblem

After :

- We know where the Segments are : the loader/dynamic linker can still do their jobs

- We don’t know where the Sections start/end

- The application has no symbol table

Introducing the problem

•Tools based on libbfd need to read the Section Headers to analyse it.

•Therefore, the handy GNU binutils utilities won't manage to analyze the target (readelf, objdump, objcopy, nm...)

•Debugging with gdb will be really uneasy :

-no symbols, so no breakpoints on symbol names. :(

-the application doesn't even have a “main”. How to get a prompt once the shared

libraries are loaded ?

Introducingtheproblem

•DEMO

How(not)toworkwith proprietary binaries anyway ?

•Use tools that aren't based on libbfd ?

-Fenris (M Zalewski) : rebuilds a symbol table for dynamically linked binaries (moderately interresting for us) http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/fenris/

-Elfsh from the Eresi project (attempts to rebuild the missing ELF section header and a symbol table) plus its debugger, tracer… http://www.eresi-project.org/

How(not)toworkwith proprietary binaries anyway ?

•The problem with existing tools...

•

DEMO

•

Hrm... so we will code our own ;)