Posts by Rapid7

1 min

Metasploit Framework 3.5.2 Released!

On February 1st, Eduardo Prado of Secumania notified us of a privilege escalation vulnerability on multi-user Windows installations of the Metasploit Framework.  The problem was due to inherited permissions that allowed an unprivileged user to write files in the Metasploit installation directory.  Today we are releasing version 3.5.2 to fix this vulnerability.  The new installers fix this issue through two changes: first, we've moved the default installation to %ProgramFiles%, which does not nor

2 min

Exploiting SEH Overwrites Using ROP

In the final days of 2010, an exploit for the Windows CreateSizedDIBSECTION vulnerability was added [https://twitter.com/#!/jduck1337/status/22315323722039296] to the Metasploit trunk. The trigger bitmap was taken byte-for-byte from Moti and Xu Hao's slides [http://www.exploit-db.com/download_pdf/15899/] from the Power of Community [http://powerofcommunity.net/] conference. However, the method for achieving code execution on Windows XP was slightly different. Since this vulnerability is basical

3 min

Mobile Device Security and Android File Disclosure

Back in November, Thomas Cannon brought to light [http://thomascannon.net/blog/2010/11/android-data-stealing-vulnerability/] an issue within the Android operating system. Specifically, he found that it was possible to obtain the contents of files on an Android device by simply persuading its owner to visit a web site under attacker control. The issue only garners a 3.5 CVSS score, but yet it's still fairly serious. Thomas reported this issue responsibly to Google and they took it seriously. Ho

2 min Patch Tuesday

January Patch Tuesday Roundup

So I know we all were hoping to see a fix for some of this Windows Graphic Rendering Engine [http://] nastiness...but no go. For now, you'll need to resort to the good ol' FixIt [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2490606] option or if you wanna get your hands dirty, you can modify the ACL on shimgvw.dll directly. Either way, if you're running IE, you'll have to patiently wait for the official patch release. So this monthly release was lean-n-mean, Microsoft released (2) bulletins, addressing (3)

7 min

Plunderous Informative Pirates

Gawker got owned. Bad. The resulting data breach resulted in some pretty entertaining fallout: a hacker gang took down a website purely on perceived arrogance and self-worth of the target, millions of accounts wound up compromised all across the web. NPR and other outlets wound up trying to tell us for like the 10th time how to make a secure password. Overall, it was probably the second-most entertaining data-breach this year. (The first one, of course, was when the GNAA goatse'd the world with

6 min Metasploit

Cisco IOS Penetration Testing with Metasploit

The Metasploit Framework and the commercial Metasploit products have always provided features for assessing the security of network devices. With the latest release, we took this a step further and focused on accelerating the penetration testing process for Cisco IOS devices. While the individual modules and supporting libraries were added to the open source framework, the commercial products can now chain these modules together to quickly compromise all vulnerable devices on the network. The sc

2 min

Offensive Security = Backtrack Linux + Metasploit Pro

This week the guys over at Offensive Security [https://www.offsec.com/] officially added Metasploit Pro [https://www.rapid7.com/products/metasploit/download/] to their curriculum for the class Pentration Testing with Backtrack [https://www.offsec.com/courses-and-certifications/]. For those not familiar with it, BackTrack [http://www.backtrack-linux.org/] is a Linux distribution that includes a lot of tools for penetration testing. Since 2006, it has been downloaded three million times and has b

2 min Metasploit

Sesame Open: Auditing Password Security with Metasploit 3.5.1

Secret passwords don't only get you into Aladdin's cave or the tree house, but also into corporate networks and bank accounts. Yet, they are one of the weakest ways to protect access. Sure, there are better ways to secure access, such as smart cards or one-time password tokens, but these are still far from being deployed everywhere although the technology has matured considerably over the past years. Passwords are still the easiest way into a network. The new Metasploit version 3.5.1 adds a l

1 min

Metasploit Framework 3.5.1 Released!

Rapid7 and the Metasploit Project are proud to announce version 3.5.1 of the Metasploit Framework!  This minor version release adds 47 new modules, including exploit covereage for recent bugs in the news: Exim4 [http://www.metasploit.com/modules/exploits/unix/smtp/exim4_string_format], Internet Explorer [http://www.metasploit.com/modules/exploit/windows/browser/ms10_xxx_ie_css_clip] , and ProFTPd.  Java payloads have seen significant improvement and java_signed_applet can now use them for compl

6 min

Capturing Windows Logons with Smartlocker

Oftentimes during a penetration test engagement, a bit of finesse goes a long way. One of the most effective ways to capture the clear-text user password from a compromised Windows machine is through the "keylogrecorder" Meterpreter script. This script can migrate into the winlogon.exe process, start capturing keystrokes, and then lock the user's desktop (the -k option). When the user enters their password to unlock their desktop, you now have their password. This, while funny and effective, can

4 min Exploits

Setting Up a Test Environment for VPN Pivoting with Metasploit Pro

Penetration testing software only shows its true capabilities on actual engagements. However, you cannot race a car before you've ever sat in the driver's seat. That's why in this article I'd like to show you how to set up a test environment for VPN pivoting, a Metasploit Pro [https://www.rapid7.com/products/metasploit/download/] feature for intermediate and advanced users recently described in this post [https://community.rapid7.com/blogs/rapid7/2010/11/08/how-vpn-pivoting-creates-an-undetectab

10 min

The Big Easy

People don't like to hire blackhats. It's great because it speaks to so many levels of assumptions and interests me immensely because of it. Arguably, the mentality speaks to a much lower level issue with the pervasive American ideal of perfectionism-- but if I wanted to wax wasteful poetic on the irritating low-level sociological tendencies of our culture, I'd start a LiveJournal. I've already got this blog, so let's just stick to the context of the greater security community. We all know th

1 min Metasploit

Turning Your World Upside Down: Metasploit Ambigram Tattoos

Bill Swearingen aka hevnsnt blew us away by designing a Metasploit ambigram for the Metasploit Pro tattoo contest You may remember Roy's Metasploit tattoo [https://community.rapid7.com/blogs/rapid7/2010/11/01/we-weren-t-joking-when-we-said-tattoos] a few weeks ago, which prompted our Metasploit Pro [http://www.rapid7.com/products/metasploit-pro.jsp] tattoo competition. We thought it was a cute idea, expecting a few fun pictures with felt pen tattoos or tattoo photo montages of of the Metas

7 min

Metasploit: Now with more commercial-grade-y-ness

Update (11/17/2010 10:14PM): I've updated the title of this post, based on solely on the fact that I don't think the old title captured the essence of the post, and didn't convey the tone i wanted to take. Clearly Metasploit is a commercial grade product, so the title is decidedly tongue-in-cheek, but it's important to highlight this fact. A huge benefit of the commercial products is that we now have the resources to provide QA'd snapshots (see below). In addition, every submission is hand-revi

1 min Patch Tuesday

November Patch Tuesday Roundup

Microsoft's November Patch Tuesday was fairly light with only 3 security bulletins covering 11 vulnerabilities, only one bulletin, MS10-087, was rated critical.    The bulletin related to MS Office 2007 and Office 2010 vulnerability which could be exploited by a classic drive by type attack when a customer views a malicious RTF. As Josh Abraham, Rapid7 security research analyst noted, the fact that November is fairly light could be a blessing. "Based on the huge amount of patches from last mo