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Alien Autopsy: Reverse Engineering Win32 Trojans on Linux 

Nov 14, 2002 02:00 AM

by Joe Stewart

In my last article, Reverse Engineering Hostile Code, I described the tools and processes involved in basic reverse engineering of a simple trojan. This article will offer a more detailed examination of the reversing process, using a trojan found in the wild. At the same time, this article will discuss some techniques for reversing Windows-native code entirely under Linux. As an added bonus, all the tools used in this article are either freeware or free software. They are:

  • Wine - the Win32 API implementation for Unix;
  • gdb - our favorite Unix debugger and disassembly environment; and,
  • IDA Pro Freeware Version - Win32 disassembler (runs on Linux under Wine release 20021007, may run under other versions as well).

Note: Readers who haven't read the previous article, Reverse Engineering Hostile Code, may want to stop and do that now, unless they already have some knowledge of C and assembly language.

Getting a Deadlisting

A deadlisting is simply a dump of the assembly language code of the trojan. We will be using IDA Pro Freeware Version for this purpose. This program does a terrific job of cross-referencing jumps, calls and string data, and really makes the assembly source easy to read. The best part is it now works on Linux under Wine. Just download the distribution from DataRescue's site, and unzip it into an empty directory. Then change to the directory where you unzipped IDA and run the Wine utility wcmd from the programs subdirectory of the Wine source code.

Figure 1 - wcmd, the command.com replacement for Wine

A new console window should open as shown in figure 1. This is an environment similar to CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM on Windows. Since you started wcmd while in the idapro directory, you now need to simply type "idaw.exe" into the wcmd window and press enter. If successful, you should see the wcmd screen change as shown in figure 2. You are now running IDA Pro under Linux.

Figure 2 - IDA Pro Freeware Version, running under Wine

If you click OK, you will see the file chooser dialog. Browse the directory tree looking for the Win32 executable you want to disassemble and click OK. Next, it will ask for some file format options. The defaults are usually sane, so you can click OK on this dialog. IDA will go to work processing all the information it finds in the executable format, and will show a "thinking" indicator in the toolbar while it is working. It can take a few seconds to several minutes to run, depending on the size of the file.

Figure 3 - IDA analyzing the code

After IDA finishes its analysis, select "File|Produce output file}Produce LST file" from the menus and save the file to disk. You now have a deadlisting of the Win32 PE file.

Figure 4 - Saving the deadlisting

Reading the Deadlisting

Open the .LST file you saved in any text editor, and find the start of the program. It is usually not at the top of the file; you can search for "start" or sometimes "WinMain". In this trojan, execution begins at offset 0x40A00C. This is where we will begin reading through the code. The main clues available in the deadlisting are Win32 API calls (which IDA Pro nicely labels for us) and offsets to string data. Here is the start of the main subroutine, all the way to the first API call:

 CODE:0040A00C CODE:0040A00C ; ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ S U B R O U T I N E ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ CODE:0040A00C CODE:0040A00C ; Attributes: bp-based frame CODE:0040A00C CODE:0040A00C                 public start CODE:0040A00C start           proc near CODE:0040A00C CODE:0040A00C var_10          = dword ptr -10h CODE:0040A00C CODE:0040A00C                 push    ebp CODE:0040A00D                 mov     ebp, esp CODE:0040A00F                 add     esp, 0FFFFFFF0h CODE:0040A012                 push    ebx CODE:0040A013                 push    esi CODE:0040A014                 push    edi CODE:0040A015                 xor     eax, eax CODE:0040A017                 mov     [ebp+var_10], eax CODE:0040A01A                 mov     eax, offset dword_0_409FCC CODE:0040A01F                 call    sub_0_404F74 CODE:0040A024                 mov     edi, offset unk_0_40C7B8 CODE:0040A029                 xor     eax, eax CODE:0040A02B                 push    ebp CODE:0040A02C                 push    offset loc_0_40A15E CODE:0040A031                 push    dword ptr fs:[eax] CODE:0040A034                 mov     fs:[eax], esp CODE:0040A037                 push    offset unk_0_40C604 CODE:0040A03C                 push    2 CODE:0040A03E                 call    j_WSAStartup 

j_WSAStartup is a local subroutine which acts as a wrapper for the Win32 API call. Given this, we know this program is likely to be opening a socket for network communication.

 CODE:0040A043                 push    6 CODE:0040A045                 push    1 CODE:0040A047                 push    2 CODE:0040A049                 call    j_socket CODE:0040A04E                 mov     ebx, eax CODE:0040A050                 mov     ds:word_0_40C794, 1 CODE:0040A059                 mov     ds:word_0_40C796, 0 CODE:0040A062                 push    4 CODE:0040A064                 push    offset word_0_40C794 CODE:0040A069                 push    80h CODE:0040A06E                 push    0FFFFh CODE:0040A073                 push    ebx CODE:0040A074                 call    j_setsockopt 

Two more wrapped API calls, setsockopt. We're going to be looking up Win32 API calls every step of the way, so let's discuss resources in this area. There are some good books on the subject, but you may find that the online, searchable MSDN Documentation is a better resource to have while deep inside a deadlisting.

Looking up the socket function prototype, we see that programs must prepare the call as follows:

SOCKET socket(int af, int type, int protocol);

At the assembly level, these arguments are passed to the system by pushing them onto the stack, last argument first. Look at the lines we found starting at offset 0x40A043 above, just prior to the j_socket call:

 CODE:0040A043                 push    6 CODE:0040A045                 push    1 CODE:0040A047                 push    2 CODE:0040A049                 call    j_socket 

So, when calling socket, the variable af would have a value of 2, type would have a value of 1, and protocol would have a value of 6. Referring to the MSDN documentation we see that an af value of 2 means AF_INET, or Internet address family. A type 1 socket is defined as SOCK_STREAM, and protocol 6 is TCP. So our trojan is establishing a TCP socket. We still don't know on what port the socket is to be opened, and if it is to be a listener or a client. Continue reading through the deadlisting.

 CODE:0040A074                 call    j_setsockopt CODE:0040A079                 mov     ds:word_0_40C798, 2 CODE:0040A082                 call    sub_0_402700 CODE:0040A087                 dec     eax CODE:0040A088                 jnz     short loc_0_40A0A5 CODE:0040A08A                 lea     edx, [ebp+var_10] CODE:0040A08D                 mov     eax, 1 CODE:0040A092                 call    sub_0_402760 CODE:0040A097                 mov     eax, [ebp+var_10] CODE:0040A09A                 call    sub_0_405EA0 CODE:0040A09F                 mov     ds:word_0_40B2C0, ax CODE:0040A0A5 CODE:0040A0A5 loc_0_40A0A5:                          ; CODE XREF: start+7C^Xj CODE:0040A0A5                 mov     ax, ds:word_0_40B2C0 CODE:0040A0AB                 push    eax CODE:0040A0AC                 call    j_htons CODE:0040A0B1                 mov     ds:word_0_40C79A, ax CODE:0040A0B7                 push    10h CODE:0040A0B9                 push    offset word_0_40C798 CODE:0040A0BE                 push    ebx CODE:0040A0BF                 call    j_bind 

The call to bind is prototyped as follows:

int bind(SOCKET s, const struct SOCK_ADDR* name, int namelen);

So at this point, the EBX register contains a pointer to the socket, and the data segment offset 0x40C798 should contain our SOCK_ADDR structure which is 16 bytes long (10h). The SOCK_ADDR structure for TCP is defined as:

  struct sockaddr_in {     short sin_family;     u_short sin_port;     struct in_addr sin_addr;     char sin_zero[8]; };  

The port number is contained in this structure (sin_port). It is in network byte-order (big endian), so if the port was a stored in a variable, it had to be converted from the x86's normal host byte-order (little-endian). Sure enough, if we look back to offset 0x40A0AC, we see the API call htons, which converts a 16-bit short integer from host order to network order. So the argument to this call (EAX at 0x40A0AC) is our port number. Let's jump back and look at the code just prior to the htons call, in order to see how our port variable got filled:

 CODE:0040A09A                 call    sub_0_405EA0 CODE:0040A09F                 mov     ds:word_0_40B2C0, ax CODE:0040A0A5                 mov     ax, ds:word_0_40B2C0 CODE:0040A0AB                 push    eax CODE:0040A0AC                 call    j_htons 

Tracing the origin of the value in EAX back from 0x40A0AC shows us it was likely a return value from subroutine 0x405EA0 called at 0x40A09A. This means we'll have to trace back at least one subroutine, maybe more, to find the port number. But we don't care to do all that work, so we will get that information another way. For now, lets return to where we were and continue on:

 CODE:0040A0C4 CODE:0040A0C4 loc_0_40A0C4:                          ; CODE XREF: start+125^Yj CODE:0040A0C4                 push    5 CODE:0040A0C6                 push    ebx CODE:0040A0C7                 call    j_listen CODE:0040A0CC                 mov     dword ptr [edi], 10h CODE:0040A0D2                 push    edi CODE:0040A0D3                 push    offset unk_0_40C7A8 CODE:0040A0D8                 push    ebx CODE:0040A0D9                 call    j_accept 

At this point, seeing the accept call tells us we are going to be a listener. Now we would like to know on what port.

Running the Code: Wine+gdb

The Wine project has ported a large set of the Win32 API calls to Linux. This enables us to run our trojan under Linux, and use gdb to debug it as if it were a native Linux executable. Wine has its own debugger, which could also serve the same purpose; however, gdb is more feature-rich. The only drawback to using gdb is that you must first trace your way through the Wine code, instead of working immediately on the Win32 code. I have a couple of breakpoints I will share below that can quickly get you past the Wine routines to land at the start of the Win32 process.

Don't forget the basic rules of reversing unknown/hostile code. Always work on non-production machines, on a network segment specifically designed to contain the trojan's traffic. Now that the safety lecture is over, launch gdb with the path to the Wine executable (not the trojan) as an argument. On my system, I would run the following command:

 gdb /usr/bin/wine.bin 

This would produce the following output. (Commands to enter after starting gdb are shown below in bold; comments in red are the author's notes)

 GNU gdb 5.2.1-2mdk (Mandrake Linux) Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are  welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.  Type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for details.  This GDB was configured as "i586-mandrake-linux-gnu"...(no debugging symbols found)... (gdb) set args ./trojan.exe  (Give gdb the argument to feed to Wine; the name of the trojan to load)  (gdb) b PROCESS_InitWine  (Set a breakpoint when Wine begins. This is  to allow us to set breakpoints later on which are currently
inaccessible since the code has not been loaded into memory yet)  Breakpoint 1 at 0x80486d0 (gdb) run  (Run the program)  Starting program: /usr/bin/wine.bin ./trojan.exe (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... Breakpoint 1, 0x400eea46 in PROCESS_InitWine () from /usr/lib/libntdll.dll.so (gdb) b SYSDEPS_SwitchToThreadStack  (Set a breakpoint at beginning of Win32 program execution. After this breakpoint is reached we can
 set our target breakpoint at 0x40a0ab)  Breakpoint 2 at 0x400f4d66 (gdb) c  (Continue executing the program)  Continuing. Could not stat /floppy (No such file or directory), ignoring drive A: Breakpoint 2, 0x400f4d66 in SYSDEPS_SwitchToThreadStack () from /usr/lib/libntdll.dll.so (gdb) b * 0x0040a0ab  (Set a breakpoint at the offset just prior to the htons API call. When setting a breakpoint
 on an offset, don't forget to prefix the offset with an asterisk)  Breakpoint 3 at 0x40a0ab (gdb) c  (Continue executing the program)  Continuing. Breakpoint 3, 0x0040a0ab in ?? ()  (We've hit our final breakpoint and landed in our trojan's main subroutine, just 
prior to the htons call. EAX should now contain our port number)  (gdb) print/x (short) $eax  (Print out the value in the EAX register)  $1 = 0x4b8c  (Our port number, in little-endian hexadecimal. 0x4b8c converted to decimal = 19340)  (gdb) quit 

Without tracing through countless subroutines in the deadlisting we have determined the trojan would have opened a listener on port 19340.

Coroner's Report

At this point, we could continue reading the deadlisting and filling in the blanks in our knowledge by setting breakpoints and reading variables/memory in gdb until every function of the program is exposed. Obviously this short article can't cover every function of even this very small trojan, but hopefully it has given you enough information to strike out on your own and conquer new trojans with a little bit of assembly, a little bit of C, a little bit of luck and a lot of patience. At first you may feel overwhelmed when presented with thousands upon thousands of lines of assembly code, but it does get easier with experience. You will eventually find patterns in the larger picture and become more removed from the line-by-line analysis, almost as if you were "feeling" the code rather than just reading it.

About the Trojan

The code above is from a Win32 backdoor found on a compromised system. Connecting to the listener produces a banner of "Barvinok NT Shell v1.0" and a password prompt. The password is hard-coded in the binary and readable in a "strings" output. After entering the password you have a basic NT command-line shell.

Joe Stewart is a Senior Information Security Analyst with LURHQ Corporation, a Managed Security Services Provider located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

This article originally appeared on SecurityFocus.com -- reproduction in whole or in part is not allowed without expressed written consent.

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