Password Cracking and Sniffing

Agenda
! ! ! ! ! ! ! Storing Passwords on the system Password Cracking on Windows and Linux Defenses against Password cracking Sniffing Defenses against Sniffing Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Man in the Middle

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Cracking Passwords
Passwords that can be guessed easily are a problem Lots of tools available to figure out passwords L0phtcrack windows password cracker John the Ripper Unix password cracker Default passwords remaining on a system are a typical vulnerability
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Password storage
Password files have passwords stored in a hashed or encrypted form Hash algorithm example is message digest 4 (MD4) Encrypted algorithm example is Data Encryption Standard (DES) When you use your password, it is hashed or encrypted and then compared to the stored value Crackers use a downloaded local copy of password file on their own machine

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Storing Passwords
Systems have a file with all hashed/encrypted passwords
! Windows SAM (Security Accounts Manager) database ! UNIX - /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow

Access to these files can make it easy for a hacker to break in

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Windows Passwords
Security Accounts Manager (SAM) has two versions for each password LanMan (LM) password version for backward compatibility with windows workgroups NT Hash cryptographic hash for windows NT/2000 (Uses MD4) SAM file is in \WINNT\system32\config\ directory which is a binary file that is hard to read Back up copy stored in \WINNT\repair

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Using Passwords
System has a hashed/encrypted version of the password stored in a file On login attempt ! system hashes/encrypts the password typed in by using for example crypt() function in linux ! Compares hashed/encrypted value to stored hashed/encrypted value ! Idea behind password cracking is to get a copy of the hashed/encrypted passwords and then make guesses, hash/encrypt the guess and compare
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Password Cracking
Dictionary Attack ! Hackers steal a copy of the stored password file ! Guess a password (may use a dictionary) ! Find hash/encrypted value of the guess ! Compare hash to entries from stored file ! Continue this till success or out of options for password guesses. Brute Force Guess every possible combination of characters Hybrid Use dictionary but add characters to dictionary entries

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Password retrieval on Windows

Sniff the network for passwords being transmitted From Administrators emergency repair disk From back-up directory

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Password Cracking on Windows

L0phtCrack lc4 (Windows) ! Available at www.@stake.com/research/lc/ ! Password Auditing and Recovery Application ! Default English dictionary 50,000 words ! Does hybrid attacks ! Our free trial version does not allow brute force (for $350 can purchase with that capability) ! Works on weaker LanMan (LM) as well as NT hashes ! Can sniff a network for LanMan hashed passwords ! Can download from a local machine or remote computer the hashed password file

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L0phtCrack (lc4)
Some statistics (from the website)
! L0phtCrack obtained 18% of the passwords in 10 minutes ! 90% of the passwords were recovered within 48 hours on a Pentium II/300 ! The Administrator and most Domain Admin passwords were cracked

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Password Cracking on UNIX

John the Ripper Available at http://www.openwall.com/john/ Supports six hashing schemes including XP Old Unix used /etc/passwd to store passwords Password is stored after cryptographically altered Various algorithms (hash/encrypted) used by various Unix platforms /etc/password is readable by everyone Some Unix store in a shadow password file thus /etc/passwd does not contain the passwords since they are instead in /etc/shadow or /etc/secure, only root can access these files If shadow file used, must have root to copy

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Password retrieval on Linux

List of login names and usernames in /etc/passwd List of encrypted passwords in /etc/shadow Only /etc/shadow is enough to crack the passwords. Having both files makes it easier

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John the Ripper

Combine information from /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow into one file Use this file as input for John the Ripper John can create guesses by
! Using built-in dictionary ! Using account information ! Using brute-force guessing algorithm
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John the Ripper

Scrambling used for each guess When a password is cracked, result displayed on screen During execution of this tool, hitting any key will give current guess and status Password complexity determines time needed for cracking them
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Defenses against Password Cracking

Select good passwords (not dictionary based) Change regularly Use tools to prevent easy passwords Use password cracking tests against own systems Protect system back ups that have password files Unix: activate password shadowing Windows: disable weaker LM authentication if no windows 95/98 machines on network
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Agenda
" Storing Passwords on the system " Password Cracking on Windows and Linux " Defenses against Password cracking Sniffing Defenses against Sniffing Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Man in the Middle
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Sniffing
Collect information being transmitted on the network Attacker must be either on source, destination or intermediate network Sniffed information can be stored/logged

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Sniffing traditional LANS

Traditional networks
! Broadcast medium easy to sniff
Data A

attacker

Data A

H U B

Data A
Data A

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Sniffing Switched LANS

Switched LANS
! Difficult to do, but possible ! ARP Cache Poisoning - Attacker must inject packets into the network to redirect traffic ! Attacker lies about the MAC address intercepts traffic
ARP tells which MAC address corresponds to which IP address

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Sniffing Switched LANS

attacker S W I T C H

Data A

Data A

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Sniffit
Easy to use sniffer Available at:
http://reptile.rug.ac.be/~coder/sniffit/sniffit.html

Can be run in interactive mode Can be used to sniff traditional LANS For Switched LANS, must be used with ARP Cache Poisoning tools
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Sniffit
Conditions to use (from the Sniffit web page):
! You should be ROOT on your machine ! The machine has to be connected to a network ! You have to be allowed to sniff (ethical condition)

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Sniffit Interactive mode

All TCP traffic can be viewed in main screen Traffic from each system and port to each system and port can be seen Has option to see data in a particular stream flow

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ethereal
From http://www.ethereal.com/ Ethereal is a free network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, viewing summary and detail information for each packet. Ethereal has several powerful features, including a rich display filter language and the ability to view the reconstructed stream of a TCP session.
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Source: www.ethereal.com ECE 4883 - Internetwork Security

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Defense against Sniffing

Transmit encrypted data across a network Dont use telnet, rsh,rlogin Use Secure Shell Use VPNs to encrypt data between systems Use switches instead of hubs makes sniffing more difficult

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Defense against Sniffing

For critical systems
! MAC level filtering on switches ! Restrict MAC addresses that can send and receive data on specific switch plugs ! Hard code ARP tables on critical systems

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Agenda
" Storing Passwords on the system " Password Cracking on Windows and Linux " Defenses against Password cracking " Sniffing " Defenses against Sniffing Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) Man in the Middle
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What is ARP?
Address Resolution Protocol
! Used to convert IP addresses to MAC addresses ! Low-Level Protocol ! Essential for inter-network communication ! Used in networks with broadcast capabilities; usually Ethernet

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How does ARP work?

Inter-network Example ! A forwards packet to Gateway ! Gateway checks to see if it has the IP address in the cache ! If so, change the address and format packet appropriately and forward on the network ! Otherwise broadcast a request on the network. B will respond with MAC address. Format packet and forward to B.

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How does ARP work?

LAN Example
! A sends ARP request packet on LAN ! Only the machine with matching IP responds with MAC ! B caches the IP & MAC pair ! Forwards all packets for same IP to the cached MAC

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Example of ARP in Use

The figure shows the use of ARP when a computer is trying to contact another computer (sysa) on the same LAN using the ping program:

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Four Types of ARP Messages

ARP request ARP reply RARP request RARP reply

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Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP)

Physical address of host machine is able to request its IP from a gateway servers ARP table A router maps the MAC address to corresponding Internet Protocol addresses RARP client program requests from the RARP server on the router to be sent its IP address RARP then returns the IP address to the machine which can store it for future use
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Format of ARP Message

The ARP request includes: -target machine (TARGET IP) -IP address of the sender machine (SENDER IP) -physical address of the sender (SENDER HA) -physical address of target machine (TARGET HA)
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ARP Poisoning

Note: ARP is stateless The malicious computer (Machine C) can send an ARP Reply to A and cause A to associate Bs IP with Cs MAC address. This will cause all messages from A to B to go to C Do the same to B
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ARP Poisoning

C can now act as middle man for all communications between A and B. C can decide which packets are forwarded and which are discarded. C can also alter communications packets between A and B. This attack can act as a doorway.
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After in the Middle:Sniffing

It is the easiest attack to launch since all the packets transit through the attacker. All the plain text protocols are compromised (the attacker can sniff user and password of many widely used protocol such as telnet, ftp, http)

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After in the Middle: Hijacking

Easy to launch It isnt blind (the attacker knows exactly the sequence numbers of the TCP connection)

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After in the Middle: Injecting

Possibility to add packets to an already established connection (only possible in full-duplex MITM) The attacker can modify the sequence numbers and keep the connection synchronized while injecting packets. If the MITM attack is a proxy attack it is even easier to inject (there are two distinct connections)

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Attacks examples (1)

Command injection

Useful in scenarios where a one time authentication is used (e.g. RSA token). In such scenarios sniffing the password is useless, but hijacking an already authenticated session is possible Injection of commands to the server Emulation of fake replies to the client
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Attacks examples (2)

Malicious code injection

Insertion of malicious code into web pages or mail (javascript, trojans, virus, etc) Modification on the fly of binary files during the download phase (virus, backdoor, etc)
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Attacks
The attacker can modify the payload of the packets by recalculating the checksum The length of the payload can also be changed but only in full-duplex (in this case the seq number has to be adjusted)

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The Lab Exercise Set up

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The Exercise - Tools

Ethereal Ettercap Hunt

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The Exercise Playing with ARP

Check ARP Table on all machines Observe changes to the ARP table using Ethereal as unknown IP addresses are pinged Get a better feel for ARP by making manual changes to the ARP table Observe effects of making incorrect entries into the ARP table

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Using Ettercap

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The Lab - Introduce Ettercap

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The Exercise Using Ettercap

Use Ettercap for Operating System finger printing Use Ettercap passively for sniffing ! Use Redhat 8.0 machine to ARP poison both 7.2 machines ! Start an FTP communication between the two 7.2 machines ! Observe traffic between the two 7.2 machines Use Ettercap actively for disruption ! Start a telnet connection between the two 7.2 machines ! Use filters to disrupt the connection between the two machines

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The Exercise Using Hunt

Hijack a connection between the two 7.2 machines
! ARP poison the 7.2 machines ! Start an active connection between the two 7.2 machines ! Use Hunt to hijack the connections #This may take a little time to complete

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Session hijack example

From http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/talks/qsm-sec/

This demonstration involves three hosts: attacker, victim, and target. attacker is the system used by the attacker for the hijack. victim is the system used by the victim for telnet client connections to the target system. target is the target system that the intruder wants to compromise. It is where the telnetd daemon is running. A simple diagram of the network shows the attacker and victim hosts are on the same network (which can be ethernet switched and the attack will still work), while the target system can be anywhere. (Actually, either victim or target can be on the same network as attacker: it doesn't matter.) For the attack to succeed, the victim must use telnet, rlogin, ftp, or any other non-encrypted TCP/IP utility. Use of SecurID card, or other token based secondary authentication is useless as protection against hijacking, as the attacker can simply wait until after the user authenticates, then hijack the session.

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Session hijack example

From http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/talks/qsm-sec/

The attack scenario can be as simple as: 1. Attacker: Spends some time determining the IP addresses of target and victim systems. Determining trust relationships can be easily done with utilities like SATAN, finger, systat, rwho or running who, ps, or last from previously stolen (or wide open "guest" style) accounts. 2. Attacker: Runs hunt as root on attacking host. Waits for hunt to indicate a session has been detected (hunt will note a new session by changing its prompt from "->" to "*>"). 3. Attacker: Starts ARP relay daemon, prepares RST daemon entry for use later, sets option to enable host name resolution (for convenience). 4. Victim: Logs in to target using telnet. Runs pine to read/compose email.

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Session hijack example

From http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/talks/qsm-sec/

5.

Attacker: Sees new connection; lists active connections to see if this one is potentially "interesting." If it is, attacker can either watch the session (packet sniffing) or hijack the session. Decides to hijack. Victim: Sees strange new prompt. Tries pressing RETURN and doesn't know what to think. Tries web browser and notices that it still works fine (not a network problem). Not sure what to think. Attacker: Finds this is a user session and decides to give it back (resynchronizes TCP/IP stream). Victim: Sees prompt for keystrokes, follows request, gets session back. Puzzled, decides to log in to root account to take a closer look. Attacker: Turns on RST daemon to prevent new connections, waits to hijack root session. Victim: Runs ssu to get SecurID protected root shell.
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7. 8. 9. 10.

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Session hijack example

From http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/talks/qsm-sec/

11. 12.

Attacker: Completes hijack after seeing root login. Victim: Sees strange prompt. Tries pressing RETURN again. Same result as before. Tries web browser again. Same thing. Tries getting a new telnet session. Fails. Tries ftp. Fails. Attacker: Sets up backdoor, disables command history, resets session, turns off RST daemon. Victim: Finally gets a new session. Original session is now gone. Assumes network outage or Windows TCP/IP stack corruption. Reboots system and everything is back to "normal"). Attacker: Waits for admin's sessions to all disappear (gone home for the night), then logs in using new backdoor. Installs rootkit (more backdoors, sniffer), cleans log files.

13. 14.

15.

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References
http://alor.antifork.org/talks/MITMBHeu03.ppt http://www.csc.vill.edu/~fsalandr/netclass /cassel.ppt http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/talks/ qsm-sec/script.html

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