Operation Triangulation – iOS Zero-click APT Exploit Info

Quick Summary: Operation Triangulation is an iOS zero-click exploit that will self destruct, looks to have been used since at least 2019, works on iOS 15.7, unsure if it works on iOS 16. Can collect location, mic recordings, photos, and manipulate iMessages. First point of entry is from an iMessage message, that compromises the device, after compromise, the message gets deleted.

https://securelist.com/operation-triangulation/109842/

https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2023_kaspersky-reports-on-new-mobile-apt-campaign-targeting-ios-devices

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/06/clickless-ios-exploits-infect-kaspersky-iphones-with-never-before-seen-malware/

Links for checking for infection.

https://securelist.com/find-the-triangulation-utility/109867/

https://github.com/KasperskyLab/triangle_check

The following is a list of C&C domains from the securelist.com article. Did a quick DNS lookup for each domain and they currently have the following records & IP addresses. Note that these can change at any time and some of the IP addresses are/can be shared with other legitimate websites if it is on a shared hosting provider.

addatamarket.net - sandy.ns.cloudflare.com, doug.ns.cloudflare.com - No A records, or TXT
backuprabbit.com - nelci.ns.cloudflare.com, morgan.ns.cloudflare.com - No A records, or TXT
businessvideonews.com - ns2.dnsowl.com, ns3.dnsowl.com, ns1.dnsowl.com - 198.251.81.30, 209.141.38.71, 107.161.23.204
cloudsponcer.com - Cloudflare, kipp.ns.cloudflare.com, joyce.ns.cloudflare.com
datamarketplace.net - ns78.domaincontrol.com, ns77.domaincontrol.com, 34.98.99.30
mobilegamerstats.com - ns1.bitdomain.biz, No A records, TXT=v=spf1 redirect=_spf.mailhostbox.com
snoweeanalytics.com - cody.ns.cloudflare.com, arlee.ns.cloudflare.com - 104.21.76.6, 172.67.184.201
tagclick-cdn.com - ns4.bitdomain.biz, ns3.bitdomain.biz, ns2.bitdomain.biz, ns1.bitdomain.biz - No A records, TXT=v=spf1 redirect=_spf.mailhostbox.com"
topographyupdates.com - nero.ns.cloudflare.com, dalary.ns.cloudflare.com - 104.21.27.67, 172.67.141.199
unlimitedteacup.com - nelci.ns.cloudflare.com, javon.ns.cloudflare.com - 104.21.55.58, 172.67.145.72
virtuallaughing.com - elaine.ns.cloudflare.com, braden.ns.cloudflare.com - 104.21.60.240, 172.67.202.140
web-trackers.com - dns1.registrar-servers.com, dns2.registrar-servers.com - 15.164.228.250
growthtransport.com - ns3.dnsowl.com, ns2.dnsowl.com, ns1.dnsowl.com - 198.251.81.30, 107.161.23.204, 209.141.38.71
anstv.net - ns64.domaincontrol.com, ns63.domaincontrol.com. - 93.90.223.185
ans7tv.net - ns37.domaincontrol.com,ns37.domaincontrol.com - 93.90.223.185

List of domains

addatamarket.net
backuprabbit.com
businessvideonews.com
cloudsponcer.com
datamarketplace.net
mobilegamerstats.com
snoweeanalytics.com
tagclick-cdn.com
topographyupdates.com
unlimitedteacup.com
virtuallaughing.com
web-trackers.com
growthtransport.com
anstv.net
ans7tv.net

List of IPv4 addresses used

107.161.23.204
198.251.81.30
209.141.38.71
34.98.99.30
172.67.184.201
104.21.76.6
172.67.141.199
104.21.27.67
172.67.145.72
104.21.55.58
104.21.60.240
172.67.202.140
15.164.228.250
209.141.38.71
198.251.81.30
93.90.223.185

Bash command to get an updated IP address list. bad.txt contains all the above domain names.

for i in `cat bad.txt` ; do dig $i a +short >> badips.lst; done

Check DNS logs

If you have a DNS server, you can check to see if there has been any name resolution by using the following. Change named.log to your dns log

# list=""addatamarket.net"
"backuprabbit.com"
"businessvideonews.com"
"cloudsponcer.com"
"datamarketplace.net"
"mobilegamerstats.com"
"snoweeanalytics.com"
"tagclick-cdn.com"
"topographyupdates.com"
"unlimitedteacup.com"
"virtuallaughing.com"
"web-trackers.com"
"growthtransport.com"
"anstv.net"
"ans7tv.net""

# for domain in $list; do echo $domain && sudo grep -i $domain /var/log/named.log; done

Setup Mikrotik capture traffic

Mikrotik packet sniffer settings to capture traffic coming or going to the above IP addresses.

/tool sniffer
set file-limit=32000KiB file-name=Triangulation filter-ip-address="107.161.23.20\
    4/32,198.251.81.30/32,209.141.38.71/32,34.98.99.30/32,172.67.184.201/32,104.\
    21.76.6/32,172.67.141.199/32,104.21.27.67/32,172.67.145.72/32,104.21.55.58/3\
    2,104.21.60.240/32,172.67.202.140/32,15.164.228.250/32,209.141.38.71/32,198.\
    251.81.30/32,93.90.223.185/32" 

You can then start the sniffer by running Tools -> Packet Sniffer Settings -> Start

or run

/tool/sniffer/start

Resolution

Apple issued an update that fixes the kernel part of the vulnerability.

https://securelist.com/triangledb-triangulation-implant/110050/

Unable to launch Flatpaks on Fedora using Hardened Kernel

If you have installed the hardened Linux Kernel on Fedora, you may have encountered the following error when trying to launch Flatpak applications.

bwrap: No permissions to creating new namespace, likely because the kernel does not allow non-privileged user namespaces. On e.g. debian this can be enabled with 'sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1'.
error: Failed to sync with dbus proxy

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/209529/what-does-enabling-kernel-unprivileged-userns-clone-do

https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap/issues/324

The issue looks to arise from the fact that the hardened Linux Kernel disables unprivileged name space and Fedora does not have setuid on by default on the bubblewrap executable.

Enabling setuid on bubblewrap

You can set the setuid permission on the bubblewrap executable with

sudo chmod u+s /usr/bin/bwrap

Allow Unprivileged Name Space (Alternative work around)

You could also allow unprivileged name space by running

sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1

Note that setting the setuid seems the safer/recommended option.

It looks like using the setuid binary for bubblewrap would be better to use then enabling unprivileged user space.

https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/guides/linux-hardening.html#sysctl-kernel

Remove setuid on bubblewrap

If you would like to remove the setuid permission for any reason, you can with the following command.

sudo chmod u-s /usr/bin/bwrap

Reversing Obfuscated Phishing Email

Ran across an email that had an attachment named Payment.htm. This kind of phishing attack isn’t anything new, but the htm file had some interesting obfuscation inside of it.

https://news.trendmicro.com/2022/10/31/html-email-attachments-phishing-scam/

Doing some online searching brought up the following analysis on Joe Sandbox

https://www.joesandbox.com/analysis/831537/0/html

Opening up the file in a virtual a Kali virtual machine, starts to load what appears to look like a Microsoft Sharepoint site. Notice the URL is the local file. It’s setup to pull the photos from the web. Since the VM had no internet available, the images never loaded.

After spinning around for a second, it loads the “log on page”, already populated with our email address. Note I changed the email address before taking the screenshot.

Typing in a random password and hitting Sign in triggers the sign in page.

Notice the ipinfo.io network connection

Going to https://ipinfo.io/json gives us a good bit of info about our IP address, location etc. It looks like this information is requested and then sent to the hackers.

Since there was not an internet connection, the malicious htm web page never received the IP information and so didn’t continue on to the next stage, it just sat there loading. Should be able to setup a fake local server and feed it the information to continue on to the next stage. Or we can just do some static code analysis

Base64, Base64 and more Base64

Opening up the file in a text editor shows tons of Base64 encoded data. The file is only about 20 lines long, but the individual lines are super long.

This first section of Base64 encoded data is by far the shortest. atob is a javascript function that decodes Base64 data. There are multiple atob functions, meaning that to actually get the data, we’ll need to decode the data multiple times. Or we can just copy out the atob functions, and run them directly in Node.js to get the output.

This is fairly easy to do, run nodejs from the command line, set the variable, and print it to console

# nodejs
> let b64 = atob(atob(etc...etc...etc...))
> console.log(b64)

Unfortunately, the next few lines are too large to do what we just did. What we can do is duplicate the file, then delete all non javascript text. Next we can replace the beginning lines where it says “document.head……atob” to

console.log(atob(atob(atob(.....))));

After we have cleaned up the file and made those changes, we save it, and now run it as a javascript file.

nodejs ./Payment.htm

If we want to, we can pipe the output into another file with the > operator

nodejs ./Payment.htm > Decoded_Payment.js

Deobfuscating the important stuff

Looking at the decoded code shows that there is still some obfuscated stuff in that last line.

The var _0x8378= array contains a lot of human unreadable text.

Fortunately, this is not hard to decode at all. In a terminal, launch nodejs again, copy the whole array as a variable, and then just print the whole array.

nodejs
> var _0x8378 [.....]
> > console.log(_0x8378);
[
  '.loaderxBlock',
  'querySelector',
  '.overlay',
  '.loginForm',
  '.lds-roller',
  '#logoPage2',
  '.backArrow',
  '.emailBlock',
  '.passwordBlock',
  '#next',
  '#signin',
  '.emailInvalid',
  '.passwordError',
  '.passwordNull',
  '#boilerText',
  '.passwordImput',
  '.emailInput',
  'ssvv',
  'getAttribute',
  'rrt',
  'getElementById',
  '#bbdy',
  '.canvas',
  '.imgclass',
  '.loader',
  '.logerMe',
  '.tittleText',
  'aHR0cHM6Ly9zdXBwb3J0Lm1pY3Jvc29mdC5jb20vZW4tdXMvb2ZmaWNlL2ZpeC1vbmVkcml2ZS1zeW5jLXByb2JsZW1zLTA4OTliMTE1LTA1ZjctNDVlYy05NWIyLWU0Y2M4YzQ2NzBiMg==',                                                                                                                                 
  'test',
  'Email =',
  'log',
  'load html',
  'href',
  'location',
  '#',
  'backgroundImage',
  'style',
  'body',
  'dXJsKCdodHRwczovL2FhZGNkbi5tc2F1dGgubmV0L3NoYXJlZC8xLjAvY29udGVudC9pbWFnZXMvYmFja2dyb3VuZHMvMl9iYzNkMzJhNjk2ODk1Zjc4YzE5ZGY2YzcxNzU4NmE1ZC5zdmcnKQ==',                                                                                                                             
  'display',
  'none',
  'block',
  'value',
  '5823592882:AB1830h83D83DjWmnaEao398JHEXhueXE83',
  '-839602468',
  'aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkudGVsZWdyYW0ub3Jn',
  'aHR0cHM6Ly9pcGluZm8uaW8vanNvbg==',
  'userAgent',
  'navigator',
  '0',
  'padStart',
  'getDate',
  'getMonth',
  'getFullYear',
  '/',
  'json',
  'ip',
  'city',
  'country',
  'org',
  'postal',
  '/bot',
  '/sendMessage?chat_id=',
  '&text=<b>OFFICE365-HTML-LOGS@ZERO</b>%0A[',
  '] ',
  '%0A<b>USER-AGENT: </b>',
  '%0A<a>see me: @mrcew</a>%0A<b>EMAIL: </b><pre>',
  '</pre>%0A<b>PASSWORD: </b><a>',
  '</a>%0A<b>Location: </b>IP: ',
  ' | CITY: ',
  ' | COUNTRY: ',
  ' | ORG: ',
  ' | POSTAL: ',
  '&parse_mode=html',
  'obago!',
  'borderColor',
  '#0067b8',
  'onLine',
  'reload',
  '.emailLabel',
  'innerHTML',
  'grid',
  'red',
  'click',
  'addEventListener',
  'length',
  'Done 2 times',
  'replace',
  '',
  ' ',
  'src',
  'keyup',
  'keyCode',
  'preventDefault'
]

Notice we have some more Base64 encoded URLs.

These are easy to decode.

> console.log(atob("aHR0cHM6Ly9zdXBwb3J0Lm1pY3Jvc29mdC5jb20vZW4tdXMvb2ZmaWNlL2ZpeC1vbmVkcml2ZS1zeW5jLXByb2JsZW1zLTA4OTliMTE1LTA1ZjctNDVlYy05NWIyLWU0Y2M4YzQ2NzBiMg=="));
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/fix-onedrive-sync-problems-0899b115-05f7-45ec-95b2-e4cc8c4670b2
> console.log(atob("dXJsKCdodHRwczovL2FhZGNkbi5tc2F1dGgubmV0L3NoYXJlZC8xLjAvY29udGVudC9pbWFnZXMvYmFja2dyb3VuZHMvMl9iYzNkMzJhNjk2ODk1Zjc4YzE5ZGY2YzcxNzU4NmE1ZC5zdmcnKQ=="));
url('https://aadcdn.msauth.net/shared/1.0/content/images/backgrounds/2_bc3d32a696895f78c19df6c717586a5d.svg')
> console.log(atob("aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkudGVsZWdyYW0ub3Jn"));
https://api.telegram.org
> console.log(atob("aHR0cHM6Ly9pcGluZm8uaW8vanNvbg=="));
https://ipinfo.io/json

The last URL is the ipinfo.io one we saw in the browser developer tools. Some of the variables from the above variable also seem to map to the return info from ipinfo.

SELinux Audit Commands and Links

You can install audit2why by installing the policycoreutils package

sudo dnf install policycoreutils-python-utils

Show what and why something is failing

audit2why < /var/log/audit/audit.log

Search with ausearch

ausearch -m avc --start recent

Create and apply a module to fix the failure

This creates two files, a .pp and .te. The .pp is the compiled version of the .te

audit2allow -M mymodule < /var/log/audit/audit.log
semodule -i mymodule.pp

Note that “mymodule.pp” will replace any previous “mymodule.pp”. If your needing to create multiple modules/allow multiple exceptions, you can change the name of each module.

You can also add the rules together then manually compile it. Refer to the first link for more details.

Links with more info

https://danwalsh.livejournal.com/24750.html

http://selinuxgame.org/tutorials/ausearch/index.html

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/security-enhanced_linux/sect-security-enhanced_linux-fixing_problems-allowing_access_audit2allow

Dual Zones in Firewalld (Public/Private or External/Internal)

In Firewalld we can use multiple zones for different types of traffic. For instance, we can setup an “internal” zone with our local IP addresses that are trusted, and then setup the public facing interface to the “drop” or “block” zone to block everything not from our internal network.

  1. Setup trusted IP addresses in the “internal” zone
  2. Configure services/ports that should be allowed on our “internal” zone
  3. Set “drop” zone as the default for all other traffic
  4. Reload firewall

1. Setup trusted IP addresses in “internal” zone

Add all of our trusted IP addresses to the internal zone. The following example adds all of the private IP addresses “RFC 1918” to the internal zone. Change as needed.

firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-source=192.168.0.0/16 --add-source=172.16.0.0/12 --add-source=10.0.0.0/8 --permanent

2. Configure services/ports that should be allowed on our “internal” zone

Next we need to specify which services or ports should be accessible in our trusted zone.

Here is an example to allow https, ssh, and cockpit services

firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-service=https --add-service=ssh --add-service=cockpit --permanent 

Here is an example to allow port 8080 tcp

firewall-cmd --zone=internal --add-port=8080/tcp --permanent

3. Set “drop” zone as the default for all other traffic

The final configuration piece we need to do is set the default zone. Anything not specified in other zones will get processed by the default zone.

firewall-cmd --set-default-zone=drop

The drop zone drops everything.

4. Reload firewall

Reload the firewall with

firewall-cmd --reload


Verifying changes

Let’s verify the changes with the firewall-cmd –get-active-zones command

# firewall-cmd --get-active-zones
drop
  interfaces: en0
internal
  sources: 192.168.0.0/16 172.16.0.0/12 10.0.0.0/8

You can also use

firewall-cmd --list-all-zones

to list all the zones. Active zones show (active) next to them.

You can verify that your changes worked by doing an internal and external nmap scan.

If you have issues with services still being accessible from the outside, try disabling Network Manager for that specific interface

You can edit the ifcfg-eth0 file and add

NM_CONTROLLED=no

AAA – What is the difference between Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting?

Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting or AAA is an framework that allows access to a computer network/resource,

Authentication

Authentication identifies the user. It’s from the Greek authentikos “real, genuine”. We can think of it as proving the identity of the user. Bob sits down at the computer and types in his password (Something he knows) and confirms that he is in fact Bob.

Authorization

Authorization is the privileges that the user has to the system. For instance, Bob is now authenticated to the computer, but he may only be authorized to access email and a web browser.

Authorization and Authentication can get confusing. In simple terms

  • Authentication – Who are you?
  • Authorization – What you have access to.

Accounting

Accounting is the auditing or logging arm of AAA. It is for answering the 5 Ws Who did what, when, where, and how. For instance, accounting could log that Bob checked his email at 9:30AM, Improved his mind by reading posts on incredigeek.com for a couple hours, then checked email again before shutting the computer down.

Hopefully that is a short helpful explanation of AAA. For more information, check out the following links.

https://afteracademy.com/blog/authentication-vs-authorization/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(computer_security)

Disable Wireless Security (WPA2) Preshared Key on Ubiquiti AC

Update: Found this handy dandy FAQs link https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009192828

Included in the FAQ is a section on “How to Disable Wireless Security on airMAX AC Devices?”

The default security configuration for AC devices since firmware version 8.5.11 was changed to WPA2 AES with a pre-shared key 0000:0000.

Ubiquiti Default AC device WPA2 Preshared key

On Ubiquiti AC radios, you can not disable WPA 2 security through the web interface. This is not necessarily bad, however, what happens if you have a client that is reset and will only connect to the default ubnt SSID?

Fortunately there is a way to disable the WPA2 Preshared key.

  1. Log into the device over ssh.
  2. Run the following command to disable WPA2 in the config
    sed -i s/aaa.1.wpa.mode=2/aaa.1.wpa.mode=0/g /tmp/system.cfg
  3. Save the config file with
    /usr/etc/rc.d/rc.softrestart save
  4. Login to the client device and configure the SSID.

After you are done, you can click the enable button to re-enable Wireless Security.

Note: aaa.1.wpa.mode=2 doesn’t appear to be on all devices. If not, change “wpasupplicant.status=enabled” to “wpasupplicant.status=disabled”

Screenshot from UI help page on Wireless Security on airMAX AC devices

Directory Traversal – Burp Suite

Here are a couple different ways to do directory traversal.

More detailed information is available at the following site.
https://portswigger.net/web-security/file-path-traversal

  1. Normal directory traversal
  2. URL Encoding
  3. Getting around applications that strip directory traversal sequences
  4. Using a null byte

Directory Traversal

What exactly is directory traversal anyway? Well, it is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. We traverse directories by manipulate the file path, for something like an image, to get something more valuable like the passwd file.

In it’s most basic form, we can add ../../../../../etc/passwd to a file path and instead of pulling an image, we get the passwd file.

For instance, if we load an image on a website, it’s file path on the server may be something like /var/www/html/image.png. If we right click on an image and open in a new tab and inspect the URL, we can see this path. “Note: Web servers have a root directory for all the website files. Generally web files’ root starts there not / root of the machine.”

Now if we remove image.png and replace it with ../ (../ on Linux/macOS or ..\ on Windows) we’ll go backwards one directory. String them together and we can go back to the root of the drive. Then we can add /etc/passwd (Or replace with whatever file we want) and load the contents of that file.

Most web applications should have some sort of protections in place to guard against directory traversal. Let’s go over a few ways to get around it.

URL Encoding

URL encoding sometimes can work and is simple to do. In Burp, select the file path, right click, Convert selection -> URL -> URL-encode all characters.

You can also try double encoding. Encode once, select the encoded text and encode again.

In the above screenshots, ../../etc/passwd becomes “%25%32%65%25%32%65%25%32%66%25%32%65%25%32%65%25%32%66%25%36%35%25%37%34%25%36%33%25%32%66%25%37%30%25%36%31%25%37%33%25%37%33%25%37%37%25%36%34”

Getting around applications that strip directory traversal sequences

Sometimes the web app can strip out text that it knows is directory traversal characters/sequences. For instance, it sees ../ in the requested url and just strips it out.

We can do something like the following sequence to get around it.

....//....//etc/passwd

That is 4 periods, followed by 2 slashes. What happens is the web app reads the URL, goes hey ../ is not allowed, bye bye! Removes the two instances of ../ and forwards the URL on. Which ends up being

../../etc/passwd

Which is just perfect for our use case.

Using a Null Byte

If the application is using the file extension to validate that an image or other file is loaded, instead of say passwd, we can try using a null byte. A null byte is used to terminate a string.

../../etc/passwd%00.png

What can end up happening is the web application sees the .png or .jpg at the end and goes “oh that is a valid extension, carry on” and then the system reads the line and sees the null byte and says “Oh null byte! end of file path, here is your file.”