Several mistakes were committed: - running everything as root - mounting the root file system as read-write - hardcoding the encryption key - enabling a network service when it's not necessary (we hadn't configured this feature, it is enabled by default) But most importantly, input wasn't sanitised. Notice that it expects a MAC address, which has a very strict and well known format: aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff After copying to an intermediate buffer with a limited size (as they did correctly), they should have validated the MAC address before proceeding. This could have easily been done with a regex, such as: ^[a-fA-F0-9]{2}(:[a-fA-F0-9]{2}){5}$ In addition, they could have introduced additional security controls, such as a properly configured firewall, sandboxing, etc.
@Ralph Reilly there's a reason for this, it saves manufacturing costs as they can just flash the same exact image over and over and let the device bootstrap when it's booted up for the first time.
@@TonyLee_windsurf You can't "hide" the private key, as the software will need it to decrypt the packet. Hard coding the key is terrible because every single router using the same firmware uses the same key. If the key was saved on a file, and checked and generated if the file was missing, it would not be possible to hack every router without physical access to it first.
Great work guys! Pedro’s explanation of the team’s process of auditing system calls is exceptional. This kind of breakdown is something I rarely see covered in detail.
We absolutely love these kinds of detailed breakdown of your thought process while looking at a target. Definitely continue doing these types of videos
You guys did an amazing job in explaining the exploitation process. For a next video I would love to see more on how you reverse engineer/decrypt the code and the process of analyzing it. Thanks for giving back to the community! You rock!
Thanks for the feedback! We will show that in detail in future videos. Bear in mind there was a serious reverse engineering effort behind all of this. Most functions in the binary were not even defined, and all symbols are our names (the binary had few symbols).
@@FlashbackTeam I understand. But what for me personally would be super interesting to see, is how to start turning that binary code into code. I think that there are not that many videos on hardware > code > recognising exploitable functions. Again, thanks for giving back to the community!
@@FlashbackTeam I was thinking "how on earth you got all those symbols if the code wasn't compiled for debugging", thanks for the clarification, a lot of effort indeed.
Wow, impressive work guys, learnt so much in a single video. As feedback I would say that it would be cool to have a quick look on the exploiting writing process ;)
I like what you have done there. Very straight forward explenation, and I have to slightly disagree with you saying it was rushed. It was perfect. Longer videos are harder to follow and the amount you put in and the little backstories like being in Laos spiced it up a little. I am looking forward to more of your exploits.
Hi , Great work guys!!!!!! I just found your channel yesterday and I'm really enjoying your videos !!!!!!!! Everything I wanted to say like 'this is awesome' !!!!!!! Please make longer video about setup your environment and witch program use for exploit for router !
idk what I should comment now.. Everything I wanted to say like 'this is awesome' and stuff has been said by everyone.. But I'm still commenting to let you guys know that we really need more of this great content from you guys!! Really appreciate it!!
Thank for sharing this. I like the no-nonsense style. For your first video this is a great piece of work. Like your graphics - a picture says more than thousand words. Must have been a lot of work but it pays back.
non-programmer here i love this breakdown. i get to witness the mindset of successfully exploiting a vulnerability (within a 13 character limitation). i actually got it. most of it made sense even to an 'illiterate' bystander like myself. pwn bounty well deserved!
Loved the experience watching the video. As a n00b, I'm thankful for the details presented and would request that even more videos with even more details would be much appreciated. And wish both of you the very best.Cheers,
Money well deserved! This was just beautiful. Thanks for sharing guys. I'd have to re-watch the reverse engineering part of the system calls a few times to understand what's happening though 😅
From a developer sight of view, it makes me now think twice about validation of strings from not trust able sources, as the exploit would break if any function in the call chain would check the input values fully also for injection. Very interesting how "easy" it is to gain access when you reach a specific level of knowledge, very nice video and remote Injection method of the remote shell!
Someone help me with a little "slap" on how to get the online interface login once I'm in it. 🤔 (I know the basics and the location of the hash required for encryption. But it has nothing to do with the online superficial passw) I had a lot of fun with the video anyway! Anyway, I had a great time with the video, let there be more of these tplink stuff..! ✔ 😎
That was pretty cool. I will like to see more videos like this one. Also a video of how someone can get started in hardware hacking, tools required will be appreciated
Nice video guys! Would it be possible to do a follow up video that talks about your danger.sh script? Not necessarily a line by line review, but maybe big picture "here's some of the ghidra api calls we use." I'd like to make a similar script for IDA.
Great job guys! Does that mean that us, the users, are vulnerable through the network just by having one of these at home?. Or would I be in trouble just if I invite you for a cup of coffee?🤣🤣🤣 Keep it up!
If you use it at home, you would only be vulnerable if you invited us for a cup of coffee... but it's not that simple, let us explain! Routers like these are used in small businesses to provide Internet service to the business' customers, which would be connected to the LAN interfaces (Wi-Fi or Ethernet). As a small business customer (let's say in a cafe, hotel or hospital), you could abuse this vulnerability, take control of the router, and attack the other customers. LAN style attacks are also relevant in large businesses, where for example you connect to a segregated Wi-Fi network, but are still connected to the LAN-side of a router, and could then execute similar attacks. In the same competition we actually hacked the same router over the WAN interface (where the router connects to the Internet), we will put a video up describing the attack in the future. This last phrase means that if you use this router, you are still vulnerable from the outside of your local network (outside of the coffee cup zone), NOT due to this specific vulnerability, but due to others we found in the same competition :D
even this video is more than 10 minutes, I'm take a break from my workload to watch this video nice education video bro, from me who interest on vulnerability hardware
We only use the Ghidra Hues plugin to have a dark theme. The original author deleted it, but here is a copy in Pedro's github repo: github.com/pedrib/ghidra.hues
The vulnerabilities demonstrated in this video are only exploitable over the LAN. It is impossible to exploit them over the WAN in the default router configuration. We used it to win the Pwn2Own Tokyo 2019 TP-Link LAN category.
Really enjoyed the video.. especially the 13 character limit part.. Out of curiosity, is there any reason tp link left the uart open or was it something they just overlooked? P.S extra kudos to the subtle humor you injected into this video.
I already didn't buy TP-Link for other reasons. This is just the final nail in the coffin. Sadly, alot of even reputable brands do similar things. Would love to see if Asus, Netgear, Eero and others have the same flaws. Makes you understand why Cyclops Blink was so effective in spreading.
What software are you using to view the code when reverse-engineering the firmware in this video? Also, I am teaching myself hardware pen-testing. What multi-purpose hardware do you recommend for connecting and reading/writing JTAG and UART? Is it Ghidra you're using to read the code? What is Pedro and where can I find it?
Hi. Yes, it's Ghidra that we use in the video for reverse engineering. Take a look at our video about UART to get some inspiration for a hardware: ruclips.net/video/01mw0oTHwxg/видео.html
As a software developer I would have liked to hear what could have been done to prevent this. Obviously not running everything as root to start with.
Several mistakes were committed:
- running everything as root
- mounting the root file system as read-write
- hardcoding the encryption key
- enabling a network service when it's not necessary (we hadn't configured this feature, it is enabled by default)
But most importantly, input wasn't sanitised. Notice that it expects a MAC address, which has a very strict and well known format: aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff
After copying to an intermediate buffer with a limited size (as they did correctly), they should have validated the MAC address before proceeding. This could have easily been done with a regex, such as: ^[a-fA-F0-9]{2}(:[a-fA-F0-9]{2}){5}$
In addition, they could have introduced additional security controls, such as a properly configured firewall, sandboxing, etc.
@Ralph Reilly there's a reason for this, it saves manufacturing costs as they can just flash the same exact image over and over and let the device bootstrap when it's booted up for the first time.
for the C, C++ devs : -Wall -Wextra -Wconversion -Werror
@@supermaster2012 One can use public key encryption, at lease hide the private key. Harder for hacker to create diff encrypted pkt.
@@TonyLee_windsurf You can't "hide" the private key, as the software will need it to decrypt the packet. Hard coding the key is terrible because every single router using the same firmware uses the same key. If the key was saved on a file, and checked and generated if the file was missing, it would not be possible to hack every router without physical access to it first.
It wasn't rushed at all. A perfect explanation at a perfect pace.
What was "connected pin to line" what was that? What did he say?
Great work guys! Pedro’s explanation of the team’s process of auditing system calls is exceptional. This kind of breakdown is something I rarely see covered in detail.
We absolutely love these kinds of detailed breakdown of your thought process while looking at a target. Definitely continue doing these types of videos
My god. I think this is the best channel ive seen so far. These dudes are legit
This is my new favorite RUclips channel full stop. Excellent work guys!
I just found your channel yesterday and I'm really enjoying your videos. The information and quality is unmatched!
the way you created a file one character at a time is so smart . i would have felt so stuck with the 13 characters .
You guys did an amazing job in explaining the exploitation process. For a next video I would love to see more on how you reverse engineer/decrypt the code and the process of analyzing it. Thanks for giving back to the community! You rock!
Thanks for the feedback!
We will show that in detail in future videos. Bear in mind there was a serious reverse engineering effort behind all of this. Most functions in the binary were not even defined, and all symbols are our names (the binary had few symbols).
@@FlashbackTeam I understand. But what for me personally would be super interesting to see, is how to start turning that binary code into code. I think that there are not that many videos on hardware > code > recognising exploitable functions.
Again, thanks for giving back to the community!
@@FlashbackTeam I was thinking "how on earth you got all those symbols if the code wasn't compiled for debugging", thanks for the clarification, a lot of effort indeed.
Wow, impressive work guys, learnt so much in a single video. As feedback I would say that it would be cool to have a quick look on the exploiting writing process ;)
Thank you for your feedback! We will go into depth on that in the next videos!
@@FlashbackTeam u are welcome, can't wait to watch them :P
@@FlashbackTeam yes, I guess, the length of the video doesn't matter for people who will wanna learn. So go for it.
I like what you have done there. Very straight forward explenation, and I have to slightly disagree with you saying it was rushed. It was perfect. Longer videos are harder to follow and the amount you put in and the little backstories like being in Laos spiced it up a little. I am looking forward to more of your exploits.
Hi ,
Great work guys!!!!!! I just found your channel yesterday and I'm really enjoying your videos !!!!!!!! Everything I wanted to say like 'this is awesome' !!!!!!! Please make longer video about setup your environment and witch program use for exploit for router !
idk what I should comment now.. Everything I wanted to say like 'this is awesome' and stuff has been said by everyone.. But I'm still commenting to let you guys know that we really need more of this great content from you guys!! Really appreciate it!!
That was fantastic and very well put together. Very educational. So excited to see more of this!
Thank for sharing this. I like the no-nonsense style. For your first video this is a great piece of work. Like your graphics - a picture says more than thousand words. Must have been a lot of work but it pays back.
Blyat, this is the best router exploit video on RUclips by a long way! More of this guys ✌️
Excellent video. I couldn't stop laughing at the `echo urmom>d` hahaha
... fiiiiinally an actually GOOD channel on such topics...
This was awesome, and thanks for showing your thought process when discovering this vuln. Hope to learn more from you guys in the future
You guys rocked🔥 lot of learning in a single video from hardware to binary, reverse engineering to maintaining access .....😃
brilliant waiting for more!
Awesome guys! What a video... very clear and objective. The exploit sending one char at a time was really dope
explanation in the state of art! Brilliant, and waiting for more, congratulations!
This is very, very well graphiced exploit explanation. Huge thanks, there are million exploit explanations but i never seen like this one.
Congratulations guys. Looking forward to learning more. Thank you for starting this channel 👍🏼👌🏽
Verry nice job. I don’t understand what you exactly does but it is so a nice idea. I want to learn this. Sooo nice
non-programmer here
i love this breakdown. i get to witness the mindset of successfully exploiting a vulnerability (within a 13 character limitation).
i actually got it. most of it made sense even to an 'illiterate' bystander like myself.
pwn bounty well deserved!
Loved the experience watching the video. As a n00b, I'm thankful for the details presented and would request that even more videos with even more details would be much appreciated. And wish both of you the very best.Cheers,
Nice exploit, even better explanation! Great work.
mad respect for you guys, what's better than learning from the bests.
Money well deserved! This was just beautiful. Thanks for sharing guys. I'd have to re-watch the reverse engineering part of the system calls a few times to understand what's happening though 😅
Nice work, thanks for the great deep dive! Keep up the great work on developing that specialty education platform :)
Thanks, will do!
I never get tired of your voice ;)
From a developer sight of view, it makes me now think twice about validation of strings from not trust able sources, as the exploit would break if any function in the call chain would check the input values fully also for injection. Very interesting how "easy" it is to gain access when you reach a specific level of knowledge, very nice video and remote Injection method of the remote shell!
Someone help me with a little "slap" on how to get the online interface login once I'm in it. 🤔 (I know the basics and the location of the hash required for encryption. But it has nothing to do with the online superficial passw)
I had a lot of fun with the video anyway! Anyway, I had a great time with the video, let there be more of these tplink stuff..! ✔ 😎
Amazing content guys. Waiting for more🙃
Loved it, great explanation with the reversing, thanks guys!
That was pretty cool. I will like to see more videos like this one. Also a video of how someone can get started in hardware hacking, tools required will be appreciated
Great work, love the thought behind constructing the final final in chunks due to the character limitation.
Very nice job! Congratulations boys!!!
Thank you guys. Absolutely awesome video! Really well structured and presented.
Really nice and clear breakdown guys and congrats on the bounty!
Great video and explanation!
Pure genius the writing to a shell script and then executing lol
Very cleverly done. I really enjoyed watching 👍
Great work! Looking forward to the next video.
Wow! Thank you so much for your work on this video. Explanations are great for someone starting out like me.
Great video, first time I've been aware of a reverse shell before really interesting stuff!
Amazing, cant wait for next video
"D is there and there is urmum" lmaoo you funny dudes
Awesome video! Great pace and explanation. The file buildup within the 13 char limit is genius haha. Well done!
Printing one char at a time to a file due to the charlimit then executing the file was genius!
Nice video guys! Would it be possible to do a follow up video that talks about your danger.sh script? Not necessarily a line by line review, but maybe big picture "here's some of the ghidra api calls we use." I'd like to make a similar script for IDA.
ah so late for this, but absolutely worth the watch. Congrats guys on this fantastic job. "Looks juicy" my new favorite phrase :p
Panowie, super robota, jako początkujący embeddeddev bardzo dziękuję za content!
This video was amazing! Right to the point and I understood everything! thank you!
Well done Flashback Team!
The explanation is quite good and making it seem easy. Good guys
Great job guys! Does that mean that us, the users, are vulnerable through the network just by having one of these at home?. Or would I be in trouble just if I invite you for a cup of coffee?🤣🤣🤣 Keep it up!
If you use it at home, you would only be vulnerable if you invited us for a cup of coffee... but it's not that simple, let us explain!
Routers like these are used in small businesses to provide Internet service to the business' customers, which would be connected to the LAN interfaces (Wi-Fi or Ethernet).
As a small business customer (let's say in a cafe, hotel or hospital), you could abuse this vulnerability, take control of the router, and attack the other customers.
LAN style attacks are also relevant in large businesses, where for example you connect to a segregated Wi-Fi network, but are still connected to the LAN-side of a router, and could then execute similar attacks.
In the same competition we actually hacked the same router over the WAN interface (where the router connects to the Internet), we will put a video up describing the attack in the future.
This last phrase means that if you use this router, you are still vulnerable from the outside of your local network (outside of the coffee cup zone), NOT due to this specific vulnerability, but due to others we found in the same competition :D
This is the best hardware hacking video I have seen in my life. Thank you!
You guy's are insane, please release nore videos. Highly appreciated
Absolutely fantastic explanation. Really enjoyed it and understood it!
Really enjoyed this explanation. Great job guys
Got damn it congrats flashback team !!!!
Awesome work! Wait for more and learn from you.
Great job guys. And great video.
GND pins are usually easy to find by eye since they're most often connected to a GND plane instead of a line.
Really nice work dudes, love the idea of building it one char at a time.
does this still work if the router was flashed with something like openwrt? or is this specific to the stock os? Anyways great job explaining!
It’s awesome guys. It’s very interesting. Thank you for explanation
This is amazing. Good job guys!
thank you guys, great video!
even this video is more than 10 minutes, I'm take a break from my workload to watch this video
nice education video bro, from me who interest on vulnerability hardware
Didn't expect to see Dashie in this video. But I'll take it!
Great vid can't wait to see more! Which plugins are you using on Ghidra?
We only use the Ghidra Hues plugin to have a dark theme. The original author deleted it, but here is a copy in Pedro's github repo:
github.com/pedrib/ghidra.hues
Thank you so much for explaining the process.
You, Sir, are a scholar and a certified badass.
Really good video guys. But this only worked because you were on the same network as the router. How to exploit it if you are not on the LAN?
The vulnerabilities demonstrated in this video are only exploitable over the LAN. It is impossible to exploit them over the WAN in the default router configuration.
We used it to win the Pwn2Own Tokyo 2019 TP-Link LAN category.
awesome video! very interesting to watch because you explain it VERY well
Excellent explanation, super cool method of exploit!
Great video, enjoyed a lot! Clever exploit:)
This is amazing! Great work
Perfect explanation, I'm going to copy the part where you go in motorcycles 😄
Your getting a sub from me I love how you go into full detail although I wish you told us what disassembler you used
"urmom" LOL, love how they the used the word in every part of the exploit
great video loved it !!
great breakdown!
was perfect exploit and explaning
Really enjoyed the video.. especially the 13 character limit part..
Out of curiosity, is there any reason tp link left the uart open or was it something they just overlooked?
P.S extra kudos to the subtle humor you injected into this video.
I think they assumed physically removing a Rx line would be enough. We see a lot of devices with enabled UART.
@@FlashbackTeam I see.. Yeah it was odd to see the uart still being there because it seemed like such an obvious security hole. Good job still!
@@FlashbackTeam is that why you bridged it with a paperclip?
UART can usually be used to recover softbricked systems.
Very cool, nice job, guys.
Excellent walkthrough thank you!!
This is a fucking masterpiece ! Great job guys ! You totally worth it !
Great stuff! Thank you for sharing.
great presentation, very clearly communicated
I already didn't buy TP-Link for other reasons. This is just the final nail in the coffin. Sadly, alot of even reputable brands do similar things. Would love to see if Asus, Netgear, Eero and others have the same flaws. Makes you understand why Cyclops Blink was so effective in spreading.
The true star of this video is ‘d’, the hiding place of ‘urmom’ 😂
Great Job! Super good video! keep on
What software are you using to view the code when reverse-engineering the firmware in this video? Also, I am teaching myself hardware pen-testing. What multi-purpose hardware do you recommend for connecting and reading/writing JTAG and UART? Is it Ghidra you're using to read the code? What is Pedro and where can I find it?
Hi. Yes, it's Ghidra that we use in the video for reverse engineering.
Take a look at our video about UART to get some inspiration for a hardware: ruclips.net/video/01mw0oTHwxg/видео.html
you guys are awesome. Love from India 😍🙏🏻
Nice work guys. Congratulations on the win. Have you always come across routers with root? What about routers with embedded microcontrollers.