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- L0pht Security Advisory
-
- Advisory released Jan. 5, 1999
- Application: Windows 95/98 Network File Sharing
- Severity: Sniffed authentications can be used
- to impersonate network users
-
- Author: weld@l0pht.com
-
- http://www.l0pht.com/advisories.html
-
-
-
- Overview :
-
- Windows 95/98 network file sharing reuses the cryptographic challenges
- used in SMB challenge/response authentication. The reuse of the
- challenge enables an attacker, who has captured a legitimate
- network authentication, to replay the authentication and establish
- a connection impersonating a valid user.
-
- Description :
-
- During testing of the L0phtCrack 2.5 SMB packet capture tool to capture
- SMB challenge/response authentication, it became apparent to the
- L0phtCrack development team that Windows 95/98 issues the exact same
- challenge for each authentication for a period of approximately 15
- minutes. During this time an attacker can connect to a network share
- as the user whose authentication was captured.
-
- The attacker can connect to the Win95/98 share as that user because the
- user name is transmitted in the clear as well as the challenge.
- Although the attacker does not know the user's password and therefore
- cannot generate the encrypted password hash from it, the attacker does
- not have to. She merely replays the encrypted hash that she captured.
- It will be correct because the challenge hasn't changed and she is
- impersonating that particular user.
-
- Reusing a challenge is a classic cryptographic mistake. If the
- challenge was simply incremented this attack would not be possible.
-
- Details :
-
- The following captures are in L0phtCrack 2.5 capture format specified
- as:
-
- DOMAIN\username:3:challenge:encrypted LANMAN hash:encrypted NTLM hash
-
- The following 2 captures show an NT machine connecting to another NT
- machine. The challenge is different, as it should be, for each
- authentication.
-
- DOMAIN\user:3:c21ee5e0c1a8ae89:626cc3ec9f8f1849bbd645541477be48bf261b486
- 9c36e7a:f9dfdb9ee9d1705a4fd45a0ed5f2c62e0c7a957860a59559
-
- DOMAIN\user:3:ce16b6d32eee2e29:8f96e377f2b9670fa425c4e52ae4ae6ae3e23f693
- d518719:d9a3180ce6e30f8a12d46703847147b70066dbaf9a5b654e
-
- The following 2 captures show an NT machine connecting to a Win98
- machine. Notice that the same challenge is issued each time.
-
- DOMAIN\user:3:8f2eceae79b55000:43caa3ff5c793d04bbbe2332e8918bf80735b0100
- 89dc573:1c592e5dcf78cf658829d0cbe61c0e4c32b5ed7a87f5097e
-
- DOMAIN\user:3:8f2eceae79b55000:43caa3ff5c793d04bbbe2332e8918bf80735b0100
- 89dc573:1c592e5dcf78cf658829d0cbe61c0e4c32b5ed7a87f5097e
-
- This capture is another NT machine connecting to the same Win98
- machine used above. Notice this is the same challenge as in the
- previous 2 authentications.
-
- DOMAIN\user:3:8f2eceae79b55000:43caa3ff5c793d04bbbe2332e8918bf80735b0100
- 89dc573:1c592e5dcf78cf658829d0cbe61c0e4c32b5ed7a87f5097e
-
- As you can see from the last 3 captures, if the username and challenge
- are the same then the encrypted hashes sent are the same.
-
- Implementation :
-
- An attacker could modify the unix Samba client to alter the way it
- issues encrypted password hashes. It could be modified to send
- a fixed encrypted password hash as entered by the attacker instead
- of generating it based on a password and the challenge. In this way
- the attacker could feed the output of an SMB packet capture into
- a modified Samba client to make Win95/98 file share connections from
- her machine.
-
- Once these connections are made, interesting files could be read from
- or written to the Win95/98 machines. Files that could be written
- include those in the Windows Startup folder which would enable
- programs to install themselves to automatically execute on system
- startup.
-
- Conclusion :
-
- This vulnerability comes at a time when many in the security
- community are waking up to the fact that a Win95/98/NT specific virus
- could spread rapidily by taking advantage of flaws in network
- authentication. The recent "Remote Explorer" virus did not take
- advantage in flaws in network authentication. It took advantage
- of poor Domain Administrator practice.
-
- Some day a virus will take advantage of flaws such as the
- aforementioned Win95/98 network impersonation or perhaps the cracking
- of network authentication that L0phtCrack 2.5 performs so
- effortlessly. Weak network security implementation and weak passwords
- will be the culprits. L0phtCrack is designed to help defeat the
- latter.
-
-
- weld@l0pht.com
- ---------------
- For more L0pht (that's L - zero - P - H - T) advisories check out:
- http://www.l0pht.com/advisories.html
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