Two days ago VMware published new update for Workstation version 10 (release notes). According to the changelog it should fix some security issues reported in OpenSSL. That’s nice, however there is a small problem with this update. VMware.exe (the GUI part of VMmare) started crashing immediately after update. This was quite a learning experience, do not update critical software if you have something important to do, as the new version can be worse than the one you are using. Since I didn’t have the previous installer at hand, I had to somehow resolve this issue differently (yeah sure, I just wanted to debug it and see, why it is crashing).
Category / reverse engineering
Solving warsaw’s Java Crackme 3
Every once in a while I’m posting solution to some crackme that I consider interesting. By interesting, I mean the solution, so it is not exactly about key generation algorithm but also about technology and tricks that are utilized. Looking at the traffic statistics, it seems that this topic isn’t exactly the one that people would like to read (three posts – 5,63% of total unique page views), but I’m truly convinced that it has great potential for every single person that wants to learn something new. All in all, there is at least one person that benefits from those tutorials – ME :) Back to the topic, in this post I’ll describe warsaw’s Java Crackme 3. Crackme was published on 14th October 2012 on crackmes.de, I’ve picked it up around February 2013, so literally speaking, it took me one year to solve it (of course I had some huge breaks meanwhile). Difficulty of the crackme was set to 5 (Professional problem to solve) in the crackmes.de scale and I must fully agree with it. It is Java crackme, but it wasn’t written in Java, I’m 99% sure that it was written in Jasmin or other assembler for Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Hand-crafted assembler and bunch of obfuscation tricks renders all existing decompilers pretty much useless, so it will not be yet another simple Java analysis.
wow64ext v1.0.0.4 – bugfix release
Bugfix release, there was a problem with GetModuleHandle64 in the previous version of the library (only v1.0.0.3 was affected). Basically I’ve failed at InLoadOrderModuleList iteration and I was skipping the last element, which is (usually) wow64cpu.dll.
Link to library hosted on google code: http://code.google.com/p/rewolf-wow64ext/
Direct link to zip package: http://rewolf-wow64ext.googlecode.com/files/rewolf.wow64ext.v1.0.0.4.zip
wow64ext finally compatible with Windows 8
I’ve some good news for everyone who was complaining that wow64ext library doesn’t work on Windows 8. I’ve researched this topic a bit, and I’ve released fixed version of the library. Problem was very simple, but it couldn’t be fixed with just one line of code. On Windows 8/8.1 x64 version of NTDLL is loaded at address above 4GB, it wasn’t the case on previous versions of Windows, as x64 NTDLL was always loaded below 4GB. Also some of the system structures are mapped above 4GB (PEB_LDR_DATA64). To fix all the issues I had to introduce new memcpy-like function that can copy data from addresses above 4GB to addresses that are accessible by the standard x86 code. I’ve also fixed problem with case-sensitive GetModuleHandle64 that popped up recently. Below you can find direct link to the updated library:
Link to library hosted on google code: http://code.google.com/p/rewolf-wow64ext/
Direct link to zip package: http://rewolf-wow64ext.googlecode.com/files/rewolf.wow64ext.v1.0.0.3.zip
Solving RedBeanSoup’s 1st Crackme (IronPython)
I’ve solved this little crackme quite some time ago, but I haven’t had time to publish the results. Besides this, protection wasn’t too hard, so I wasn’t sure if there is really anything to publish. Crackme was published on 14 January 2010 on crackmes.de, difficulty was set to 3 (Getting harder). Honestly speaking, without IronPython I would say that difficulty of this crackme is 1 (Very easy, for newbies, in the terms of crackmes.de scale), but with IronPython… well, it proved to be hard enough for me. Below analysis will shed some light on IronPython internals, there will be also part about .NET (as IronPython is just .NET Python), I’ll also cover the protection part, but it will not take too much space.
WoW64 internals: Tale of GetSystemFileCacheSize
Few days ago someone asked me if I can somehow add GetSystemFileCacheSize to wow64ext library. I’ve researched this topic a bit and the final answer is no, because it is not necessary. In today post I’ll try to describe internals of GetSystemFileCacheSize function and its limitations, I’ll also show the different way of obtaining the same information as original GetSystemFileCacheSize.
Evolution of Process Environment Block (PEB)
Update 2016.09.14: This post is a bit outdated, if you are interested in some more recent research in this topic check out Terminus Project
Over one year ago I’ve published unified definition of PEB for x86 and x64 Windows (PEB32 and PEB64 in one definition). It was based on PEB taken from Windows 7 NTDLL symbols, but I was pretty confident that it should work on other versions of Windows as well. Recently someone left a comment under mentioned post: “Good, but its only for Windows 7”. It made me curious if it is really ‘only for Win7’. I was expecting that there might be some small differences between some field names, or maybe some new fields added at the end, but the overall structure should be the same. I’ve no other choice but to check it myself. Continue reading →
Solving |sas0|’s “The Game” crackme (.NET)
Another approach to crackmes solving, this time it is .NET crackme written by |sas0|. I’ve found it on crackmes.de, it was published on 27 November 2012, difficulty was set to 3 – Getting harder. I’ve decided to give it a try as I don’t have much experience with .NET targets. It took me 3 days to solve it, but I consider those three days as a good time investment, because I had a chance to learn a few new things. So, here is my story:
Debugging ring 3 part of PE/PE+ loader
Someone may ask what is the purpose of debugging PE loader, here are a few reasons:
- checking why executable is not loaded properly (imports, TLS, other initialization related issues)
- looking for some hidden features (e.g. LdrpCheckNXCompatibility)
- plain curiosity
Of course debugging ring 3 part of PE/PE+ loader can reveal only part of the truth, for the second part (or rather first part if I want to be strict) there is MiCreateImageFileMap function inside ntoskrnl (source code of this function can be found in Windows Research Kernel: \base\ntos\mm\creasect.c, it is a bit old, but most of the stuff hasn’t changed much). In this short article I’ll cover only x86 and x64 of ring 3 part.
Solving gim913’s KeygenMe#01
Due to permanent lack of time and really long personal TODO list I’m not frequent crackme-solver, but sometimes it is good to check if my skills didn’t get rusty. I’ve browsed through unsolved crackmes on crackmes.de and found quite new gim913’s crackme that was unsolved for almost 2 months (yup, I know that it’s not much :) ). Knowing reputation of the author I’ve decided to give it a try, as probably there will be something interesting inside. So, let’s start.