Metasploit Weekly Wrap-Up 01/26/24

Direct Syscalls Support for Windows Meterpreter

Direct system calls are a well-known technique that is often used to bypass EDR/AV detection. This technique is particularly useful when dynamic analysis is performed, where the security software monitors every process on the system to detect any suspicious activity. One common way to do so is to add user-land hooks on Win32 API calls, especially those commonly used by malware. Direct syscalls are a way to run system calls directly and enter kernel mode without passing through the Win32 API.

This first implementation focuses on substituting the Win32 API calls used by the Reflective DLL Injection (RDI) library with Direct Syscalls to the corresponding Native API's. For example, VirtualAlloc has been substituted by a system call to ZwAllocateVirtualMemory. Since RDI is used everywhere by Meterpreter and its extensions, it was a very good candidate for this initial work.

The main difficulty is to find the correct syscall number since it is not the same across Windows versions. Also, EDR's usually hook the NTDLL native API, making the discovery of syscall numbers more challenging. The technique used for this is based on the assumption that the syscall numbers are assigned in a sequential order, starting from the number 0. If we look at how native API functions are stored in memory, the syscall number can be deduced from the position of the related native API function in memory. The technique consists in selecting the system call functions (Zw…) from ntdll.dll exports and sorting them in ascending order of their memory addresses. The syscall number of one given native API function is simply its index in this sorted list. This is very similar to the technique used by Halo's Gate.

Another improvement is to make sure the call to the syscall instruction is made through ntdll.dll. EDR/AV can monitor this and flag any system calls not coming from ntdll.dll as suspicious. This technique is directly taken from RecycledGate. Here, the complexity is that Meterpreter must be compatible with all Windows versions from WinXP to the most recent flavors. This implementation will take care of parsing ntdll.dll and get the correct trampoline address that will be used when the system call is executed.

This work is a first step and we expect more additions this year. The next step is to switch additional Win32 API requests that Meterpreter and its extensions make to their corresponding native API using Direct Syscalls. The long-term goal is to make Direct Syscalls a standard for any future Windows-based development (payload, exploit, etc.).

New module content (8)

GL.iNet Unauthenticated Remote Command Execution via the logread module.

Authors: DZONERZY, Unknown, and h00die-gr3y [email protected]
Type: Exploit
Pull request: #18648 contributed by h00die-gr3y
Path: linux/http/glinet_unauth_rce_cve_2023_50445

Description: This PR adds an exploit module for a number of different GL.iNet network products. The module combines an authentication by-pass vulnerability (CVE-2023-50919) with an RCE (CVE-2023-50445) allowing the user to remotely obtain, without authentication, a Meterpreter session running in the context of the root user.

Ivanti Connect Secure Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution

Author: sfewer-r7
Type: Exploit
Pull request: #18708 contributed by sfewer-r7
Path: linux/http/ivanti_connect_secure_rce_cve_2023_46805

Description: This PR adds an exploit chain that consists of two vulnerabilities, an authentication bypass (CVE-2023-46805) and a command injection vulnerability (CVE-2024-21887). The exploit chain allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary OS commands with root privileges. As per the Ivanti advisory, these vulnerabilities affect all supported versions of the products, versions 9.x and 22.x. It is unknown if the unsupported versions 8.x and older are also affected.

MajorDoMo Command Injection

Authors: Valentin Lobstein and smcintyre-r7
Type: Exploit
Pull request: #18630 contributed by Chocapikk
Path: linux/http/majordomo_cmd_inject_cve_2023_50917

Description: This adds an exploit for a command injection vulnerability in MajorDoMo versions before 0662e5e.

Saltstack Minion Payload Deployer

Authors: c2Vlcgo and h00die
Type: Exploit
Pull request: #18626 contributed by h00die
Path: linux/local/saltstack_salt_minion_deployer

Description: This PR adds an exploit module which allows for a user who has compromised a host acting as a SaltStack Master to deploy payloads to the Minions attached to that Master.

Apache Commons Text RCE

Authors: Alvaro Muñoz, Gaurav Jain, and Karthik UJ
Type: Exploit
Pull request: #18638 contributed by errorxyz
Path: multi/http/apache_commons_text4shell

Description: Adds an exploit module for CVE-2022-42889 that targets web apps utilizing Apache Commons Text's (1.5-1.9) StringSubstitutor interpolator class in an insecure fashion.

Atlassian Confluence SSTI Injection

Authors: Harsh Jaiswal, Rahul Maini, and Spencer McIntyre
Type: Exploit
Pull request: #18734 contributed by zeroSteiner
Path: multi/http/atlassian_confluence_rce_cve_2023_22527

Description: This adds an exploit for CVE-2023-22527 which is an unauthenticated RCE in Atlassian Confluence. The vulnerability is due to an SSTI flaw that allows an OGNL expression to be evaluated. The result is OS command execution in the context of the service account.

PRTG CVE-2023-32781 Authenticated RCE

Author: Kevin Joensen [email protected]
Type: Exploit
Pull request: #18568 contributed by ggisz
Path: windows/http/prtg_authenticated_rce_cve_2023_32781

Description: This PR adds a module leveraging CVE-2023-32781, an authenticated command injection vulnerability in PRTG versions 23.2.84.1566 and earlier. The result is command execution as SYSTEM.

Memory Search

Author: sjanusz-r7
Type: Post
Pull request: #18713 contributed by sjanusz-r7
Path: multi/gather/memory_search

Description: Adds a new multi/gather/memory_search module that can read memory of processes on Windows and Linux hosts with Meterpreter. Regular expressions can be used to find passwords/credentials, and glob patterns and PIDs can be used to identify target processes.

Enhancements and features (6)

#17634 from adfoster-r7 - Reliability and stability notes that have been previously missing have been added to some modules.
#18645 from jvoisin - This adds a way to get the Build ID from ld.so by using the 'perf' command. Before this module depended on the commands 'file' and 'readelf' being installed to get the Build ID.
#18663 from sjanusz-r7 - Adds a new Postgres session type, which is current behind a feature flag that can be activated with: features set postgresql_session_type true. Example usage: use scanner/postgres/postgres_login followed by run postgres://postgres:[email protected]:9000/template1 createsession=true verbose=false.
#18720 from zeroSteiner - This enhancement marks the existing Unix encoders as also being compatible with Linux. Previously, no encoder modules were marked as compatible with Linux, so users could not set bad character when using the new fetch payloads.
#18735 from AleksaZatezalo - Adds additional module metadata to the exploits/windows/iis/iis_webdav_scstoragepathfromurl module.
#18737 from zeroSteiner - This updates metasploit-payloads gem to 2.0.165 to pull in changes to support direct syscalls for Meterpreter on Windows. See this PR and this PR for details.

Bugs fixed (3)

#18662 from dwelch-r7 - Fixes an edgecase where features set dns_feature true did not correctly parse a user's /etc/resolv.conf file if there were multiple nameservers present.
#18712 from ekalinichev-r7 - Fixes a crash with Metasploit's REST api when calling /api/v1/modules?name=aux.
#18746 from zeroSteiner - Fixes a module bug when using the generate OPTION=VALUE syntax. Previously, the module's datastore would be unintentionally updated with the new option value.

Documentation added (1)

#18729 from poupapaa - This fixes a typo in Metasploit-Guide-SMB.md.

You can always find more documentation on our docsite at docs.metasploit.com.

Get it

As always, you can update to the latest Metasploit Framework with msfupdate
and you can get more details on the changes since the last blog post from
GitHub:

If you are a git user, you can clone the Metasploit Framework repo (master branch) for the latest.
To install fresh without using git, you can use the open-source-only Nightly Installers or the
commercial edition Metasploit Pro