2. Orange Tsai
• Principal security researcher at DEVCORE
• Captain of HITCON CTF team
• 0day researcher, focusing on
Web/Application security
orange_8361
6. SSL VPN
• Trusted by large corporations to protect their assets
• Work with any network environments and firewalls
• Clientless, a web browser can do everything!
SSL VPNBrowser
SSL/TLS
Intranet
9. Why focusing on SSL VPN
1. Important corporate assets but a blind-spot
2. Widely used by corporations of all sizes
3. Only few SSL VPN vendors dominate the market
4. Direct Intranet access and must be exposed to outside
10. Even NSA is hunting bugs on
SSL VPN
Think about Equation Group leaks
16. A silent-fix case
• We accidentally found a pre-auth RCE on Palo Alto SSL VPN
during our Red Team assessment
• A silent fixed 1-day:
• No CVE
• No advisory
• No official announcement
18. Response from Palo Alto PSIRT
Palo Alto Networks does follow coordinated vulnerability disclosure for
security vulnerabilities that are reported to us by external researchers.
We do not CVE items found internally and fixed. This issue was previously
fixed, but if you find something in a current version, please let us know.
21. We focus on…
• Pulse Secure SSL VPN
• More than 50,000+ servers operating on the Internet
• Trusted by large corporations, service providers and government
entities
• Fortigate SSL VPN
• More than 480,000+ servers operating on the Internet
• Prevalent among medium-sized enterprises
23. Difficulties for kick-starting
• SSL VPN is a black box and closed source appliance
• All-in-one & Build their own architecture stacks from scratch
• Only restricted shell provided
• Jailbreak is the prerequisite for further researches
25. Jailbreak the SSL VPN
• We are not hardware guys :(
• So we look into the virtual image first
• Analyzing virtual images
1. Typical virtual images
2. Encrypted virtual images
26. Typical virtual images
• If there is no LILO or GRUB password protected, we can just enter
the Single-User mode
• Mount the .VMDK on your Linux box and modify the filesystem
• /etc/crontab
• /etc/ld.so.conf
• /etc/passwd
• Many ways…
36. WebVPN
• A convenient proxy feature – Portable & Clientless
• Proxy all kinds of traffics through the web browser
• Supports various protocols
• HTTP, FTP, TELNET, SSH, SMB, RDP …
• Handles various web resources
• WebSocket, JavaScript, Flash, Java Applet …
37. WebVPN implementation
• Build from scratch
• Protocols, web resources handling are prone to memory bugs
• Requires high security awareness
• Debug function
• Logging sensitive data
• Information exposed
38. WebVPN implementation
• Modify from an open source project
• Copy the code, copy the bugs
• Hard to maintain & update & patch
• Call existing libraries
• Neglect to update
• Libcurl (2008), Libxml (2009)
39. • Most SSL VPNs have their own native script
language extensions
• En/Decoding in C/C++
• Type confusion between
languages
Web Stack
F5 Networks PHP / C (Apache extension)
Cisco Lua / C (self-implemented server)
Pulse Secure Perl / C++ (self-implemented server)
Fortigate Nginx / C (Apache extension)
Palo Alto PHP / C (AppWeb extension)
Citrix PHP / C (self-implemented server)
Native script language
extensions
40. En/Decoding in C/C++
• String operation is always difficult for C language
• Buffer size calculation
• Dangerous functions
• Misunderstood functions
ret = snprintf(buf, buf_size, format, …);
left_buf_size = buf_size – ret;
41. Type confusion
• Type seems the same but …
• Perl string or C string?
• What TYPE is it?
my ($var) = @_;
EXTENSION::C_function($var);
43. Multi-layered architecture
problems
• Inconsistency between each architecture layer
• Failed patterns
• Reverse proxy + Java web = Fail
• Breaking Parser Logic by Orange Tsai from Black Hat USA 2018
• Customized(C/C++) web server + RESTful API backend
45. Case studies
Pre-auth remote code execution on Fortigate SSL VPN
Pre-auth remote code execution on Pulse Secure SSL VPN
46. Disclaimer
All the CVEs mentioned below have been reported and patched
by Fortinet, Pulse Secure and Twitter
47. Fortigate SSL VPN
• All programs and configurations compiled into /
• About 500 MB, stripped idb with 85k functions
• Plenty of function tables
• Customized web daemons
• Based on apache since 2002
• Self-implemented apache module
/bin/init
49. Worth mentioning bugs
• Pre-auth RCE chain
• CVE-2018-13379: Pre-auth arbitrary file reading
• CVE-2018-13382: Post-auth heap overflow
• The magic backdoor
• CVE-2018-13383: Modify any user’s password with a magic key
50. Arbitrary file reading
• A function reading language json files for users
• Concatenate strings directly
• No ../ filter
• Limited file extension
snprintf(s, 0x40, "/migadmin/lang/%s.json", lang);
51. snprintf(s, 0x40, "/migadmin/lang/%s.json", lang);
Arbitrary file reading
• Utilize the feature of snprintf
• The snprintf() and vsnprintf() functions will write at most size-1 of
the characters printed into the output string
• Appended file extension can be stripped!
lang=/../../../..//////////////////////////////bin/sh/migadmin/lang//../../../..//////////////////////////////bin/sh.json
0x40
58. Heap overflow vulnerability
• HTTP proxy
• Perform URL rewriting
• JavaScript parsing
• memcpy to a 0x2000 heap buffer without length check
memcpy(buffer, js_url, js_url_len);
59. Exploitation obstacles
• Destabilizing factors of heap
• Multiple connection handling with epoll()
• Main process and libraries use the same heap – Jemalloc
• Regularly triggered internal operations unrelated to connection
• Apache additional memory management
• No free() unless connection ends
60. Jemalloc allocator limitation
• Centralize small objects
• Stores small regions in
corresponding runs
• Reduce interference between
small and large objects
• Limit target options
header
bitmap
reg 0
reg 1
reg 2
…
reg N
header
bitmap
reg 0
reg 1
…
reg N
run
(0x20)
run
(0x30)
61. Surprise!
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007fb908d12a77 in SSL_do_handshake () from /fortidev4-
x86_64/lib/libssl.so.1.1
2: /x $rax = 0x41414141
1: x/i $pc
=> 0x7fb908d12a77 <SSL_do_handshake+23>: callq *0x60(%rax)
(gdb)
63. SSL structure (OpenSSL)
• Stores information of each SSL connection
• Ideal target
Allocation triggered easily
Size close to JavaScript buffer
Nearby JavaScript buffer with regular offset (k + N pages)
Useful structure members
64. Useful structure members
typedef struct ssl_st SSL;
struct ssl_st {
int version;
const SSL_METHOD *method; //func table
…
int (*handshake_func) (SSL *);
};
65. Mess up connections
• Overflow SSL structure
• Establish massive connections
• Lots of normal requests
• One overflow request
Fortigate
SSL VPN
Massive
connections
Normal request
Overflow request
Normal request
Normal request
Fuzzer
70. *handshake
_func
… …
LOW HIGH
From SEGFAULT to RCE
HEAP MEMORY
SSL SSL SSL
version method
*handshake
_func
ssl_accept()
… …
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
71. LOW HIGH
Forge SSL structure
HEAP MEMORY
SSL SSL
version method
system()
JS Buffer SSL
*handshake
_func
… …
72. Enjoy your shell!
• Send fuzzy connections to meet the condition
• Daemon may crash multiple times
• Fortigate owns a reliable watchdog!
• Get a shell in 1~2 minutes
77. Pulse Secure SSL VPN
• Pulse Secure was formed a divestiture of Juniper Networks
• Customized web server and architecture stack
• Perl enthusiast - numerous Perl extensions in C++
• LD_PRELOAD all processes with:
• libsafe.so - Detect and protect against stack smashing attacks
• libpreload.so - User-mode networking system call hooks
79. Arbitrary file reading
• CVE-2019-11510 – Webserver-level pre-auth file reading
• Pulse Secure has introduced a new feature HTML5 Access since
SSL VPN version 8.2
• A new solution to access Telnet, SSH and RDP via browsers
• To handle static resources, Pulse Secure created a new IF-case to
widen the original strict path validation
80. Am I affected by this vuln?
• Probably YES!
• All un-patched versions are vulnerable except the End-of-Life 8.1 code
$ curl -I 'https://sslvpn/dana-na///css/ds.js'
HTTP/1.1 400 Invalid Path
$ curl -I 'https://sslvpn/dana-na///css/ds.js?/dana/html5acc/guacamole/'
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
81. What can we extract?
1. Private keys and system configuration(LDAP, RADIUS and SAML…)
2. Hashed user passwords(md5_crypt)
3. Sensitive cookies in WebVPN(ex: Google, Dropbox and iCloud…)
4. Cached user plaintext passwords
82. What can we extract?
1. Private keys and system configuration(LDAP, RADIUS and SAML…)
2. Hashed user passwords(md5_crypt)
3. Sensitive cookies in WebVPN(ex: Google, Dropbox and iCloud…)
4. Cached user plaintext passwords
83. Command Injection
• CVE-2019-11539 – Post-auth Command Injection
sub tcpdump_options_syntax_check {
my $options = shift;
return $options if system("$TCPDUMP_COMMAND -d $options >/dev/null 2>&1") == 0;
return undef;
}
/dana-admin/diag/diag.cgi
85. Pulse Secure hardenings
• Several hardenings on Pulse Secure SSL VPN…
1. System integrity check
2. Read-only filesystem(only /data are writable)
3. The DSSafe.pm as a safeguard protects Perl from dangerous
operations
86. The Perl gatekeeper
• DSSafe.pm
• A Perl-C extension hooks several Perl functions such as:
• system, open, popen, exec, backstick…
• Command-line syntax validation
• Disallow numerous bad characters - [&*(){}[]`;|?n~<>]
• Re-implement the Linux I/O redirections in Perl
87. Failed argument injection :(
• TCPDUMP is too old(v3.9.4, Sept 2005) to support post-rotate-command
• Observed Pulse Secure caches Perl template result in:
• /data/runtime/tmp/tt/*.thtml.ttc
• No way to generate a polyglot file in both Perl and PCAP format
Usage: tcpdump [-aAdDeflLnNOpqRStuUvxX] [-c count] [-C file_size]
[-E algo:secret] [-F file] [-i interface] [-M secret]
[-r file] [-s snaplen] [-T type] [-w pcap-file]
[-W filecount] [-z postrotate-command]
[-y datalinktype] [-Z user] [expression]
/usr/sbin/tcpdump –help>_
88. Time to dig deeper
• Dig into DSSafe.pm more deeply, we found a flaw in
command line I/O redirection parsing
use DSSafe;
system("tcpdump -d $options >/dev/null 2>&1");
system("tcpdump -d -h >file >/dev/null 2>&1"); # `file` not found
system("tcpdump -d -h >file < >/dev/null 2>&1"); # `file` created
dssafe_example.pl
89. Think out of the box
STDOUT is uncontrollable
Could we write a valid Perl by just STDERR?
90. Think out of the box
$ tcpdump -d -r '123'
tcpdump: 123: No such file or directory
$ tcpdump -d -r '123' 2>&1 | perl -
syntax error at - line 1, near "123:"
Execution of - aborted due to compilation errors.
91. Think out of the box
$ tcpdump -d -r 'print 123#'
tcpdump: print 123#: No such file or directory
$ tcpdump -d -r 'print 123#' 2>&1 | perl –
123
98. Response from Pulse Secure
• Pulse Secure is committed to providing customers with the best Secure Access Solutions
for Hybrid IT- SSL VPN and takes security vulnerabilities very seriously
• Timeline:
• This issue was reported to Pulse Secure PSIRT Team on March 22, 2019
• Pulse Secure fixes all reported issues in short span of time and published the security advisory SA44101 on
April 24, 2019 with all software updates that address the vulnerabilities for unpatched versions
• Pulse Secure assigned the CVE’s to all reported vulnerabilities and updated the advisory on April 25, 2019
• Pulse Secure sent out a reminder to all customers to apply the security patches on June 26, 2019
• Pulse Secure would like to thank DEVCORE Team for reporting this vulnerability to Pulse
Secure and working toward a coordinated disclosure
99. Hacking Twitter
• We keep monitoring large corporations who use Pulse Secure
by fetching the exposed version and Twitter is one of them
• Pulse Secure released the patch on April 25, 2019 and we wait
30 days for Twitter to upgrade the SSL VPN
101. Twitter is vulnerable
$ ./pulse_check.py <mask>.twitter.com
[*] Date = Thu, 13 Dec 2018 05:34:28 GMT
[*] Version = 9.0.3.64015
[*] OK, <mask>.twittr.com is vulnerable
104. Two-factor authentication
• Bypass the two-factor authentication
1. Although we can extract cached passwords in plaintext from
/lmdb/dataa/data.mdb, we still can not do anything :(
2. Observe Twitter enabled the Roaming Session (enabled by default)
3. Download the /lmdb/randomVal/data.mdb to dump all session
4. Forge the user and reuse the session to bypass the 2FA
117. Weaponize the SSL VPN
• The old-school method
• Watering hole / Drive by download
• Replace SSL VPN agent installer
• Man-in-the-middle attack
118. Weaponize the SSL VPN
• The new method to compromise all VPN clients
• Leverage the logon script feature!
• Execute specified program once the VPN client connected
• Almost every SSL VPN supports this feature
• Support Windows, Linux and Mac
121. Recommendations
• Client certificate authentication
• Multi factors authentication
• Enable full log audit (Be sure to send to out-bound server)
• Subscribe to the vendor's security advisory and keep system
updated!