Win95/98 SMB Authentication Vulnerability (fwd)

[weld () L0PHT COM (Weld Pond)]

                          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
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