P2V Windows 7: BSOD Solution

For whatever reason, when performing a P2V on a Windows 7 machine, you are very likely to experience a BSOD, even if you use VMware Converter. There is a painless workaround, however, using a combination of Sysinternals Disk2vhd and Starwind V2V Converter. In my case, after using these tools, I also had to make some registry edits with an offline registry editor in order to resolve the BSOD. The steps are actually quite easy, though it took me a while to figure them out.

Before I give you the how-to, I want to say I'm very thankful to these two bloggers for the information on the aforementioned tools, and also thankful to various forum posters from whom I got the needed registry settings. Today's post is meant to gather the various information I used into one resource and relate my experience. Also, the offline registry edit I did from a live (virtual) CD may be useful information to some. Here are the steps I used to P2V my Windows 7 Pro 64-bit machine so that it could be used in VMware Workstation Player:

1. Download and run Disk2vhd on the Windows 7 physical machine you want to convert.

2. The Disk2vhd interface is very simple. Just be sure to set it to be vhd (not vhdx which would be for Windows 8) and let it do it's thang.

3. Download, install and run StarWind V2V Converter. (They make you fill out a contact form and then they send you a download link. Or, you may be able to get this link to work, so you don't have to. :) )

4. Use StarWind V2V Converter to convert your vhd to a vmdk and copy the resulting vmdk to your host machine. It has very simple interface.

5. Open VMware Workstation Player and create a new Windows 7 virtual machine. Before powering it on, however, remove the hard drive and replace it with the vmdk created above.

6. Power on the VM. In my case, at this point I still got a BSOD and was considering giving up. If this is you, read on...

7. You're going to have to make some offline registry edits on your unbootable system. You could do this by connecting your virtual hard drive of your VM to another Windows VM (google it), but my preference was to boot the VM to AVG Rescue CD. Just download AVG Rescue CD and boot your VM to the ISO.

8. Choose the registry editor in the AVG Rescue CD menu under Utilities.

9. Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet[001]\services\

10. For me, I was able to fix the problem by editing each of the following to be a value of 0:

HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet[001]\services\LSI_SAS\Start
HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet[001]\services\LSI_SAS2\Start

However, reading online, it appears that some users with different drivers had to make other registry changes under HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet[001]\services\. Here are some of the other edits I saw on various forums:

Aliide\Start = 3
Amdide\Start =3
Atapi\Start = 0
Cmdide\Start = 3
iaStorV\Start = 3
intelide\Start = 0
msahci\Start = 3
pciide\Start = 3
viaide\Start = 3

Do not make these updates unless you know what you are doing. Consider writing down the current settings before making any changes so you can revert if needed.

11. As soon as I made the LSI_SAS\Start and LSI_SAS2\Start registry edits and booted back into the native/guest OS, it started working!

Specs:

Host OS = lubuntu 14.04.4 64-bit

Guest OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Live CD: AVG Rescue CD ( avg_arl_cdi_all_120_150814a10442.iso )
vmware Workstation 12 Player

Passing an NTLM Hash to the Browser

In some scenarios, an attacker may have been able to extract Active Directory password hashes but has not been able to successfully crack some or all of them. In this case, it may be possible to perform authentication by merely passing the hash itself, instead of the password. The specific focus of this post, is a pass-the-hash attack on a website which uses NTLM authentication.

(click to zoom)

Under normal circumstances, a user might pull up Internet Explorer and browse to the website which uses NTLM authentication. At that point, if this user is not a domain user, they would typically get a prompt for a username and password. If the user who is logged into the computer is a domain user, they would potentially be automatically logged in using the Windows credentials of the current login session. In the attack, our scenario involves an attacker who has already extracted the victim user's password hash (but not the actual password) and will use it for login. The attacker is logged into Windows with credentials which do not allow them access to the website in question. However, the attacker passes the hash to the current Windows session in order to impersonate the victim user. The attacker then browses to the website using Internet Explorer and is able to automatically authenticate without ever needing the password itself - only the hash. This attack can take place from any computer which is able to access the website. If the website is only accessible internally, as many such NTLM pages are, then the attacker would need to have access to a computer located on the LAN. However, if the website is accessible from the Internet, the attacker could perform the pass-the-hash attack from a remote location outside the network, depending on the individual circumstances. Below are the details on the attack.

TL;DR:
Use wce

Prerequisites:
Extracted hash (extraction process not covered in this post)
Windows computer to perform the attack from
Target website which uses NTLM authentication
Connectivity to the website
wce (Windows Credentials Editor)

wce download link:
https://dl.packetstormsecurity.net/Win/wce_v1_4beta_universal.zip (expect browser/AV blocking)

Tested on:
Windows 7, 64 bit
Internet Explorer 11, 64 bit
wce v1.4beta x64 (Windows Credentials Editor)

Steps:
1. Log onto the Windows computer which will be used for the attack
2. Configure Internet Options:
     a. Security>Custom level for the zone>Automatic logon only in intranet zone
     b. Add website to Local Intranet sites
3. Run wce, give it the hash and tell it to call IE: wce -s <UserName>:<DomainName>:<LMHash>:<NTHash> -c "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
4. Browse to the website for the automatic login

As you can see, the attack is very simple. Here are the wce command line switches in use:

-s Changes NTLM credentials of current logon session. Parameters: <UserName>:<DomainName>:<LMHash>:<NTHash>.
-c Run <cmd> in a new session with the specified NTLM credentials.

Hmm...Maybe it's time to re-think that Sharepoint NTLM authentication.

Cracking Microsoft Office File Passwords

The best way to crack the password on a Microsoft Office file is by first extracting the hash of the actual password itself. But how to do that? The script office2john.py is really useful for this. It extracts the password hash and converts it to a format that John the Ripper can handle. This is not a tutorial on John, so you'll have to hit up google for that. But I'll give you the basic commands to get the job done. This should work on files from pretty much any version of Office, including xls and xlsx, etc. (Office 2003-2013).

First, you'll need to download office2john.py. You can get it from github here. Or, you can download a copy I put here.

Depending on your cracking strategy, you will likely also need a dictionary file for the attack. I will be using a dummy dictionary file as PoC, but there are lots out there and I won't go into that as a part of this post.

You'll of course also need John installed (google it) and will need a target Office file. I'm doing this from Kali 2.0 on an Excel 2013 test file which I encrypted with a password from Excel. Here are the files/names I used:

dictionary.lst (dictionary file)
office2john.py (extracts hash)
test-crack.xlsx (target)

Okay, here we go. First, we extract the hash:

./office2john.py test-crack.xlsx > test-crack-hash.txt

(click to zoom)

The hash has now been outputted to test-crack-hash.txt and we can begin cracking. The method I used was a dictionary attack:

john --session=xlsx --rules --wordlist=dictionary.lst test-crack-hash.txt

Here is an explanation of the command line options used:

--session=
An optional identifier for you to manage the John session, in case you have multiple sessions. You can make the string after the equals sign be whatever you want.

--rules
Enables wordlist rules

--wordlist=
The dictionary file to use for the attack.

[filename]
The last parameter is the text file containing the extracted hash.

It should show the password when it completes, if your cracking was successful. You can also run the following to show the cracked password, after it completes: john --show test-crack-hash.txt

Now you should be able to open the Office file using the password you cracked. It goes without saying, that this should only be used for ethical purposes, so don't do evil stuff!

Ciao!

Installing Kali via YUMI

I like to use YUMI to maintain a USB thumb drive with various live operating systems and installers, including Kali. I generally prefer this over the dd image method. From time to time, I run into trouble with operating systems which aren't immediately compatible, but can often find a resolution. This was the case with Kali 2.0. I could boot into the installer, but the installer itself would fail to detect the installation media. This caused the installer to fail completely. Here are the screenshots - you can click to zoom.

Here's the fix I came up with. I went back to the menu and chose Execute a Shell. Using the shell, I deleted /cdrom and created a new symlink to /cdrom from the appropriate directory of the installation media. (Fyi, in this particular chassis, I don't have a CD-ROM drive at all.)

This tricked the installer into thinking the files on the USB thumb drive were located on an installer CD. The issue was immediately resolved and the installer was able to proceed past the point it was stuck at.

Hope this little hack helps someone out!

Ciao!

Kali Broken - "Cleaning up temporary files"

I broke my Kali Linux. I was going wild with Burp Suite while forgetting I was low on disk space. Once I noticed the disk was full, it was too late. The system was too crashy to even use and I had to do a hard boot. Of course, once I did a hard boot it wouldn't come back up. The booting process would get stuck at "Cleaning up temporary files" and then eventually die at a blank screen. :(

I've documented the steps I used to fix it, minus a few wrong turns I took. :) Hope this helps someone:

1. Download Kali Linux in order to boot it live for the repair
2. Create bootable media from the ISO (I like YUMI)
3. Boot the live Kali to the GUI
4. Run the command df from Terminal and leave the results up for now
5. Open Thunar, right click the HDD with the broken Kali install and choose mount
6. Type the encryption password (this gave me an error which I just ignored)
7. Right click the LVM and start the multidisk
8. Wait a moment and then right click again and mount it. Unfortunately, this mounts it read only. No worries...
9. Run df again in order to determine what was mounted and where. Compare the 2 df outputs.
10. Now unmount it with: sudo umount /media/the-place-it-is-mounted
11. Create a new directory for mounting: sudo mkdir /media/hdd
12. Mount it as read/write: sudo mount -o rw /the/path /media/hdd (Replace /the/path with the partition you are trying to mount. You can determine this by comparing the results from the 2 times you ran df.)
13. Use chroot to make the mounted filesystem be treated sorta like you booted into it directly: chroot /media/hdd
14. Delete whatever you can to free up space
15. Clean up the tmp files: rm -r /tmp/*
16. Exit chroot: exit
17. Close Terminal
18. Go back to Thunar, unmount and stop the multidisk.
19. Reboot into the repaired Kali install!

Remember, always keep good backups!!

EDIT: @blackMOREOps just reminded me of something...Don't forget to clean the Trash folder! I did this and forgot to document. Thanks @blackMOREOps!



Repaired OS: Kali Linux 1.0.6, 32 bit
Live OS: Kali Linux 1.1.0a, 32 bit

A Prophesy

I hereby prophesy that on July 8, 2015 Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) will tweet about a weird blog where a guy claims to have prophesied about the Hacking Team compromise. Troy's tweet will look something like this:

I will even predict the URL of his tweet:

https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/618909553892003840

You're welcome!

Make a Phablet With Free Out/Inbound VoIP Calls

I think we need one last Google Voice hack before Google potentially messes it up by moving it to Hangouts, don't ya think? Okay, how about turning your tablet into a phablet using Google Voice and Talkatone and having free calls in and out? What's a phablet? A hybrid between a tablet and a phone, of course! I just made my Android tablet a phablet by doing these simple steps:

1. Install the Google Voice app on the tablet
2. Install the Talkatone app on the tablet
3. Go to a web browser and add the Talkatone phone number to the Google Voice account

So where does the hacking come in? It's like this: Talktone only let's you receive calls for free, but not dial calls for free. Once your introductory free minutes are gone, you've gotta pay up in order to dial out. Unless you're me or you, that is! You see, we are going to call out by making the Google Voice app call IN to your Talkatone app. Wait, you mean one app will call the other app, all on the same device??? Yup!!!

When you need to dial out, just go to the Google Voice app and dial your friend's number but choose your Talkatone phone number in the dropdown menu. The next thing that will happen is that your Talkatone app will ring. Once you pick it up, it will start ringing your friend's number. Just like my previous Google Voice hack, we are basically dialing out by dialing in! Enjoy free unlimited outbound/inbound VoIP on your phantabulet!!!