STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

August 2, 2003

Hack any website

Defcon 11 2003 Edition - Alexis Park, Las Vegas, USA
Grgoire Gentil
CEO and CTO of Twingo Systems

This document is solely for the presentation of Twingo Systems. No part of it may be circulated, quoted, or reproduced for distribution without prior written approval from
Twingo Systems. By reading this document, the Receiving Party agrees:
(i) to hold the Disclosing Partys Proprietary Information in confidence and to take reasonable precautions to protect such Proprietary Information (including, without
limitation, all precautions the Receiving Party employs with respect to its confidential materials),
(ii) not to divulge any such Proprietary Information or any information derived there from to any third person,
(iii) not to make any use whatsoever at any time of such Proprietary Information except to evaluate internally its relationship with the Disclosing Party
(iv) not to copy or reverse engineer any such Proprietary Information and not to export or reexport (within the meaning of U.S. or other export control laws or
regulations) any such Proprietary Information or product thereof.

AGENDA

Overview of the attack

Demos
General analysis
Technical analysis

How to defend?
Conclusion
Questions and Answers

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

WHAT CAN YOU DO WHEN YOU WANT TO STEAL MONEY?

You can either attack the bank

Or you can attack all the customers of the bank

But be careful, security can be tough

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

WHAT CAN YOU DO WHEN YOU WANT TO HACK A WEBSITE?

You can either attack the server

Or you can attack all the clients

But be careful, security can be tough

This is what I will teach you today

Firewall, intrusion
detection, anti-virus,

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

AGENDA

Overview of the attack

Demos
General analysis
Technical analysis

How to defend?
Conclusion
Questions and Answers

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

DEMOS

Demo 1: Dynamic modification of the content of a webpage

Modify the homepage of a media website

Demo 2: Dynamic modification of the javascript of a webpage

Modify the features of the list view of a webmail

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

AGENDA

Overview of the attack

Demos
General analysis
Technical analysis

How to defend?
Conclusion
Questions and Answers

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

SCOPE OF THE SECURITY VULNERABILITY

Requires Internet explorer 4.0 and Windows 95 or later
Google Zeitgeist (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) shows that more than 90% of
the Google requests come from Windows Internet Explorer

Requires DLL registration

An executable must be run once with Power user privileges
Many privilege escalation and code execution from a webpage without user intervention
have been discovered

As you will see through this presentation, the attack is extremely generic and can lead to a lot of
malicious scenarii.

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

ADVANTAGES OF THE ATTACK

No modification on the targeted server is required

The attack uses a feature developped by Internet Explorer!!!

Microsoft provides and supports all the required tools

The installed DLL cannot be detected by anti-virus. This is a standard DLL with no specific
signature or whatsoever

You can personalize the attack for all the clients

You can attack only one client

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

AGENDA

Overview of the attack

Demos
General analysis
Technical analysis

How to defend?
Conclusion
Questions and Answers

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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INTRODUCING BROWSER HELPER OBJECTS

Implemented as COM in-process DLL and loaded by Internet Explorer.
The browser initializes the object and asks it for a certain interface. If that interface is found,
Internet Explorer uses the methods provided to pass its IUnknown pointer down to the helper object

Implemented also in Explorer

See Dino Esposito article Browser Helper Objects: The Browser the Way You Want It in MSDN

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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ACCESSING THE INTERFACE OF THE BROWSER

The IObjectWithSite Interface: HRESULT SetSite( IUnknown* pUnkSite )

Receives the IUnknown pointer of the browser. The typical implementation will simply store such a
pointer for further use

HRESULT SetSite( IUnknown* pUnkSite )

{
if ( pUnkSite != NULL ) {
m_spWebBrowser2 = pUnkSite;
if ( m_spWebBrowser2 ) {
// Connect to the browser in order to handle events
if ( ! ManageConnection( Advise ) )
MessageBox( NULL, "Error", "Error", MB_ICONERROR );
}
}
return S_OK;
}

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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GETTING THE BROWSER EVENTS

The IConnectionPoint interface: HRESULT Connect( void )

To intercept the events fired by the browser, the BHO needs to connect to it via an IConnectionPoint
interface and pass the IDispatch table of the functions that will handle the various events

HRESULT Connect( void )

{
HRESULT hr;
CComPtr<IConnectionPoint> spCP;
// Receives the connection point for WebBrowser events
hr = m_spCPC->FindConnectionPoint( DIID_DWebBrowserEvents2, &spCP );
if ( FAILED( hr ) )
return hr;
// Pass our event handlers to the container. Each time an event occurs
// the container will invoke the functions of the IDispatch interface we implemented
hr = spCP->Advise( reinterpret_cast<IDispatch*>(this), &m_dwCookie );
return hr;
}

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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ACCESSING THE DOCUMENT OBJECT

STDMETHODIMP Invoke( DISPID dispidMember, REFIID riid, LCID lcid, WORD wFlags, DISPPARAMS*
pDispParams, VARIANT* pvarResult, EXCEPINFO* pExcepInfo, UINT* puArgErr )
{
CComPtr<IDispatch> spDisp;
if ( dispidMember == DISPID_DOCUMENTCOMPLETE ) {
m_spWebBrowser2 = pDispParams->rgvarg[1].pdispVal;
CComPtr<IDispatch> pDisp;
HRESULT hr = m_spWebBrowser2->get_Document( &pDisp );
if ( FAILED( hr ) ) break;
CComQIPtr<IHTMLDocument2, &IID_IHTMLDocument2> spHTML;
spHTML = pDisp;
if ( spHTML ) {
// Get the BODY object
CComPtr<IHTMLElement> m_pBody;
hr = spHTML->get_body( &m_pBody );
// Get the HTML text
BSTR bstrHTMLText;
hr = m_pBody->get_outerHTML( &bstrHTMLText );
// Get the URL
CComBSTR url;
m_spWebBrowser2->get_LocationURL( &url );
}
}
return S_OK;
}
(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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REGISTRING AND INSTALLING THE COMPONENT

Register the DLL (regsvr32.exe myBHO.dll for instance) and create a key in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft \Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser
Helper Objects with the GUID of the component
The next instance of Internet Explorer will automatically load the BHO

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

15

AGENDA

Overview of the attack

Demos
General analysis
Technical analysis

How to defend?
Conclusion
Questions and Answers

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

16

SOME POSSIBLE DEFENSES

Disable all or selected BHOs installed on the client
Simply Enumerate the BHOs from the registry and analyze the DLL information (see code on the
DefCon CD)
HKEY hkey;
TCHAR szPath = SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Browser Helper Objects;
If ( RegOpenKey( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, szPath, &hkey ) == ERROR_SUCCESS ) {
TCHAR szGUID[255];
LONG ret = RegEnumKey( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, 0, szGUID, 255 );
Int i = 0;
while ( ( ret != ERROR_NO_MORE_ITEMS ) && ( ret == ERROR_SUCCESS ) ) {
// You have the BHO GUID in szGUID
ret = RegEnumKey ( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, i, szGUID, 255 );
i++;
}
}

Main drawback: Pretty painful as BHOs can be sometimes useful

Acrobat plug-in is a BHO, Google toolbar uses BHO,

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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SOME POSSIBLE OTHER DEFENSES

Microsoft could improve BHO support in coming releases of Internet Explorer

Create a tag <disableBHO> to disable all BHOs for a given web page
Implement an authentication system to disable only non approved BHOs (implementation of
a tag <disableNonApprovedBHO>)

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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AGENDA

Overview of the attack

Demos
General analysis
Technical analysis

How to defend?
Conclusion
Questions and Answers

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

19

CONCLUSION

Attack can be selective, personalized

The malicious can connect to an external website and download specific information

You should not trust what you see (especially if this is not your computer)

Use BHOWatcher to regurarly check the BHO installed on your computer

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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CONTACT INFORMATION

Main contact:

Gregoire Gentil
CEO and CTO of Twingo Systems
gregoire@twingosystems.com

Company:

Twingo Systems, Inc.

Provides security tool to secure the untrusted computer

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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AGENDA

Overview of the attack

Demos
General analysis
Technical analysis

How to defend?
Conclusion
Questions and Answers

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

22

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

If you have any question, it is the moment to ask

(c) 2003 Twingo Systems, Confidential

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