HHJC Synagogue Family

Hollis Hills Jewish Center

This post is going to be a rather strange post compared to previous ones. But bear with me, in the middle of the post you will see why this post fits the IT security topic.

I'm also terribly sorry for not posting recently, but I was busy with my SPSE and SLAE certification. Both are recommended for Python and Assembly noobs like me. But back to this post.

A little bit of history

Cheating in games started as help for game testers. By using invincibility or infinite ammo testers were able to test the game quicker, which meant less money spent on testing. I personally use cheat codes in games, depending on my mood. Sometimes it feels good to slash all the opponents while I'm invincible, sometimes it is more fun to play the game without cheats. One can argue whether cheating in games is OK or not, but I believe it depends, there is no black or white. But one thing is for sure, it is part of the gaming industry. There is huge demand for cheats. There were even cheat books printed on paper...

The different types of cheats (on PC)

There are different types of cheats in PC gaming. Following is a noncomplete list of these cheats:

Cheat codes

The good old IDDQD type of cheats. These are left in the game by the developers intentionally. Nothing interesting here.

Edit memory

This is my favorite. I will talk about this at the end of the post. Whenever a user launches a new program, the program's whole memory is accessible (read/write) to every other program launched by the user. And since the memory stores the current game state (health, ammo, armor, etc.), these values can be changed easily. In the good old times, there were POKE commands to do this cheats, and the memory address to write into was published by people who found where the game stores the most critical states about the game.

Code injection

This is like patching the game code. For example, one can change the "DEC (pointer to your current health)" instruction with NOP (do nothing), thus becoming invincible. In multi-player cheats, there is the aimbot to help you aim at enemies, wallhack to see through the wall, increase hitbox of the enemy for smoother hit, or in MMORPGs, one can write macros to collect items while the player is not online. I would say the so-called "trainers" more or less fit into this category and the previous one.

Saved game editor

The first time a kid meets a hex-editor (just like the co-author of this blog did with SIM City when he was 10 years old - David). It can teach a lot about file structures, the hexadecimal numeral system, etc. Fun times.

Hacking game server

Not very common, but even more fun. Warning: endless trolling possibilities in multi-player games ahead :) How to hack a game server? Well, I think this might deserve another full blog post ...

Network traffic hacking

One last necessary type of cheating is to modify network traffic between the client and the game server. AFAIK SSL is not universal in gaming, so stunnel is not needed for this hack, but ettercap can help in changing the communication.

Why cheating becomes more critical (and challenging)?

Now in the age of in-app-payments, the game creators are no longer thinking about cheats as funny things but something to be destroyed to the ground. Because cheating decreases its revenue. Or not. At least they think it does. To quote Wikipedia here, "cheating in such games is nonetheless a legal grey area because there are no laws against modifying software which is already owned, as detailed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

A lot of online games include anti-cheating components like PunkBuster, nProtect GameGuard, or Valve Anti-Cheat. This whole cheating/anti-cheating industry is the same as the virus/anti-virus industry. A cat and mouse game.

Freemium games

If you have not played with "freemium" games, you should watch South Park season 18, episode 6. - "Freemium Isn't Free." If you did play with freemium games, you definitely have to watch it :) There are many problems with freemium games. It is free to install, free to play. The first 3-4 hours might be fun to play. But after that, it turns out it is impossible to advance in the game without paying money for it. And by spending cash, I mean spending a LOT! Let's have a look at today's example, an arcade racing video game.

For 99.99 USD, you can get 3 000 000 credit. For almost double the price of a new PC game, you can get these credits. In this particular game, I estimate one have to play ~6-24 hours constantly to get this amount of credit. But by playing ~6 hours, I mean 6 hours without progress in the game! Kind of boring. And what do you get from 3 000 000 credit? You can buy one of the most expensive cars, but can't tune them fully. You have to play more (without progress) or buy more. But guess what, there are more cars you can't buy by only playing the game. Those are only available via in-app-purchase.

Even though the player has 58 765 533 credits, it is not possible to buy this car. Only available through real money.

So, what are your possibilities? You are either Richie Rich, and can afford the money to buy these. Or you can be insane, and try to play the game without in-app-purchase. Or give up the game and try another freemium ... Or, you can try to hack the game!

Hack all the freemium games!

Although I was not playing this racing game from day one, I was able to witness the evolution of the cheats against this game. The cheats which worked in one day was not working one month later. The game is continuously updated to defeat the newly published cheats.

Noob start

So, I want to hack this game, what is the first thing a noob like me does? ~~Bing it!~~ Google it!

From the first page result, let's check this tool:

While trying to download that, I just have to give my email address to spammers, or my mobile number will be subscribed to premium rate text messages. What fun.

Another "cheat" program will install malware/adware on your computer. Never ever try these programs. They are fake 99% of the time and after installing those you will have another problem, not just how to hack freemium games.

Beginners start - Cheat engine

When I first heard about hacking games in memory, I visualized hours of OllyDBG/ImmunityDBG/(insert your favorite Windows debugger here). It turned out, there are some specialized tools to help you with cheating the game. No assembly knowledge required. My favourite tool is CheatEngine. I highly recommend to download it and spend 10 minutes to get past the built-in tutorial levels to get a feeling about this tool. It's super duper awesome.

When I first tried to hack this game myself, I scanned the memory for my actual credit and tried to change that, no luck. Keep reading, you will see what happened.

The second cheat I tried with cheat engine was something like this:

Start the game, play the first level, and check how many credits is paid for winning the race. Pro tip: use dual display for full-screen game cheating.
Restart the same level, attach Cheat Engine to the game's process
Scan the memory for the same value at the beginning of the race
Scan the memory for the same value at the end of the game. The intersect of the first and second scan includes the real value where the credit is stored for winning the race.
Change the values (both the real one and some false positives) to something big
Watch the game to crash
Be amazed at the money you received

Nowadays, most of the cheats on YouTube does not work. Except for these kind of cheats. I don't want to recreate that tutorial, so you should watch it first then come back.

Are you back? Great. Do you have any idea what have you just seen? No? Well, in this case, don't try this at home. Copy-pasting assembly code from random internet posts and running on your computer is always a bad idea. It is precisely as risky as downloading free programs from random internet sites.

Although I have not seen people trolling others with this cheat engine type of shellcode, I think the time will come when these will be turned into something terrible. These shellcodes might work, or might harm your computer. The good news is, we can have a look at the code and analyze it.

When you open CheatEngine and try to define a new custom type, you are greeted with a skeleton assembly code. I don't want to detail what all the skeleton code does, let's just focus on the difference between the skeleton code and the code used in the video. This is the "decrypt function":

xor eax, 0baadf00d
rol eax, 0e

What does it mean? The actual credit is encrypted in memory. If you want to scan it in memory, you won't be able to find it. But! The encryption is rotating the value to the right (ROR) with 0xE (14 in decimal), and after that, it is XOR-ed with 0xbaadf00d. Decrypting it is the inverse of the functions in reverse order (in this particular case, the order does not matter, but that's not the point). The inverse function of XOR is XOR, and the inverse function of ROR (rotate right) is ROL (rotate left). Now that we analyzed the assembly code, we can be sure that it is safe to execute. Just follow the video and see your coins falling from the sky. For free. In a freemium game. Have fun!

Encrypt memory - applications at financial institutions

Another exciting thing is that I don't recall any thick client applications in the financial industry encrypting the values in memory. And I agree, there are more significant problems with thick client applications than not encrypting the essential values in memory. But still, some thick client applications are regularly updated, maintained. Maybe it is a good idea to encrypt the values in memory. It will make attackers' life harder. Not impossible, but harder. Perhaps the developers of these applications should learn from the gaming industry (or from malware developers for that matter) because it is a shame that an arcade racing game or an FPS is protected better than an application responsible for transacting millions of dollars. Just think about the RAM scraping malware stealing millions of credit card data ...

Moral of the story

Cheating is part of the gaming history, and the freemium games are trying to take away the cheats from the gamers because they want money. Thanks to CheatEngine and some clever hacks, these programs can be still beaten. And guess what, there is CheatEngine for Android - although it did not work for me on the latest Android. And sometimes, hacking all kinds of applications can be more comfortable with CheatEngine, compared to traditional debuggers.

Also, always check the code before executing it! And when you find something cool, publish it, so everyone could enjoy the games!

I had a project to test some malicious and exploit pcaps and collected a lot of them (almost 1000) from various public sources. You can see them in the PUBLIC folder. The credits go to the authors of the pcaps listed in the name of each file. Please visit their blogs and sites to see more information about the pcaps, see their recent posts, and send them thanks. The public pcaps have no passwords on them.

Update:Dec 13. 2014

Despite rare updates of this post, we have been adding pcaps to the collection so remember to check out the folder ( Pcap collection (New link)) for the recent pcaps!

Update:Dec 31. 2013 - added new pcaps

I did some spring cleaning yesterday and came up with these malware and exploit pcaps. Such pcaps are very useful for IDS and signature testing and development, general education, and malware identification. While there are some online public sandboxes offering pcaps for download like Cuckoo or Anubis but looking for them is a tedious task and you cannot be totally sure the pcap is for the malware family supposedly analysed - in other words, if the sandbox says it is Zeus does not necessarily mean that it is.

I found some good pcap repositories here (http://www.netresec.com/?page=PcapFiles) but there are very few pcaps from malware.

These are from identified and verified (to the best of my knowledge and belief - email me if you find errors) malware samples.

All of them show the first stage with the initial callback and most have the DNS requests as well. A few pcaps show extended malware runs (e.g. purplehaze pcap is over 500mb).
Most pcaps are mine, a few are from online sandboxes, and one is borrowed from malware.dontneedcoffee.com. That said, I can probably find the corresponding samples for all that have MD5 listed if you really need them. Search contagio, some are posted with the samples.

Each file has the following naming convention:
BIN [RTF, PDF] - the filetype of the dropper used, malware family name, MD5, and year+month of the malware analysis.

I will be adding more pcaps in the future. Please donate your pcaps from identified samples, I am sure many of you have.

Thank you

Download

Download all together or separately.

All pcaps archives have the same password (same scheme), email me if you need it. I tried posting it without any passwords and pass infected but they get flagged as malware. Modern AV rips though zips and zips with the pass 'infected' with ease.

APT PCAPS

Download all together or separately.

2012-12-31 BIN_Xinmic_8761F29AF1AE2D6FACD0AE5F487484A5-pcap
2013-09-08 BIN_TrojanPage_86893886C7CBC7310F7675F4EFDE0A29-pcap
2013-09-08 BIN_Darkcomet_DC98ABBA995771480AECF4769A88756E-pcap
2013-09-02 8202_tbd_ 6D2C12085F0018DAEB9C1A53E53FD4D1-pcap
2013-09-02 BIN_8202_6d2c12085f0018daeb9c1a53e53fd4d1-pcap
2013-09-02 BIN_Vidgrab_6fd868e68037040c94215566852230ab-pcap
2013-09-02 BIN_PlugX_2ff2d518313475a612f095dd863c8aea-pcap
2013-09-02 BIN_Taidoor_46ef9b0f1419e26f2f37d9d3495c499f-pcap
2013-09-02 BIN_Vidgrab_660709324acb88ef11f71782af28a1f0-pcap
2013-09-02 BIN_Gh0st-gif_f4d4076dff760eb92e4ae559c2dc4525-pcap.zip
2013-07-15 BIN_Taleret.E_5328cfcb46ef18ecf7ba0d21a7adc02c.pcap
2013-05-14 BIN_Mediana_0AE47E3261EA0A2DBCE471B28DFFE007_2012-10.pcap
2013-05-14 BIN_Hupigon_8F90057AB244BD8B612CD09F566EAC0C
2013-05-14 BIN_LetsGo_yahoosb_b21ba443726385c11802a8ad731771c0_2011-07-19
2013-05-13 BIN_IXESHE_0F88D9B0D237B5FCDC0F985A548254F2-2013-05-pcap
2013-05-06 BIN_DNSWatch_protux_4F8A44EF66384CCFAB737C8D7ADB4BB8_2012-11-pcap
2013-05-06 BIN_9002_D4ED654BCDA42576FDDFE03361608CAA_2013-01-30-pcap
2013-05-06 BIN_BIN_RssFeeder_68EE5FDA371E4AC48DAD7FCB2C94BAC7-2012-06-pcap (not a common name, see the traffic ssheet http://bit.ly/maltraffic )
2013-04-30 BIN_MSWab_Yayih_FD1BE09E499E8E380424B3835FC973A8_us-pcap
2013-04-29 BIN_LURK_AF4E8D4BE4481D0420CCF1C00792F484_20120-10-pcap
2013-04-29 BIN_XTremeRAT_DAEBFDED736903D234214ED4821EAF99_2013-04-13-pcap
BIN_Enfal_Lurid_0fb1b0833f723682346041d72ed112f9_2013-01.pcap
BIN_Gh0st_variant-v2010_B1D09374006E20FA795B2E70BF566C6D_2012-08.pcap
BIN_Likseput_E019E37F19040059AB5662563F06B609_2012-10.pcap
BIN_Nettravler_1f26e5f9b44c28b37b6cd13283838366.pcap
BIN_Nettravler_DA5832657877514306EDD211DEF61AFE_2012-10.pcap
BIN_Sanny-Daws_338D0B855421867732E05399A2D56670_2012-10.pcap
BIN_Sofacy_a2a188cbf74c1be52681f998f8e9b6b5_2012-10.pcap
BIN_Taidoor_40D79D1120638688AC7D9497CC819462_2012-10.pcap
BIN_TrojanCookies_840BD11343D140916F45223BA05ABACB_2012_01.pcap
PDF_CVE-2011-2462_Pdf_2011-12.pcap
RTF_Mongall_Dropper_Cve-2012-0158_C6F01A6AD70DA7A554D48BDBF7C7E065_2013-01.pcap
OSX_DocksterTrojan.pcap

CRIMEWARE PCAPS

Download all together or separately.

2013-11-12_BIN_ChePro_2A5E5D3C536DA346849750A4B8C8613A-1.pcap
2013-10-15_BIN_cryptolocker_9CBB128E8211A7CD00729C159815CB1C.pcap
2013-09-20_BIN_Lader-dlGameoverZeus_12cfe1caa12991102d79a366d3aa79e9.pcap
2013-09-08 BIN_Tijcont_845B0945D5FE0E0AAA16234DC21484E0-pcap
2013-09-08 BIN_Kelihos_C94DC5C9BB7B99658C275B7337C64B33-pcap.zip
2013-08-19 BIN_Nitedrem_508af8c499102ad2ebc1a83fdbcefecb-pcap
2013-08-17 BIN_sality_CEAF4D9E1F408299144E75D7F29C1810-pcap
2013-08-15 BIN_torpigminiloader-pcap.zip
2013-13-08 EK_popads_109.236.80.170_2013-08-13.pcap
2013-11-08 BIN_Alinav5.3_4C754150639AA3A86CA4D6B6342820BE.pcap
2013-08-08 BIN_BitcoinMiner_F865C199024105A2FFDF5FA98F391D74-pcap
2013-08-07 BIN_ZeroAccess_Sirefef_C2A9CCC8C6A6DF1CA1725F955F991940_2013-08-pcap
2013-07-05 BIN_Kuluoz-Asprox_9F842AD20C50AD1AAB41F20B321BF84B
2013-05-31 Wordpress-Mutopy_Symmi_20A6EBF61243B760DD65F897236B6AD3-2pcap.pcap
2013-05-15 BIN_Zeus_b1551c676a54e9127cd0e7ea283b92cc-2012-04.pcap
2013-05-15 BIN_Gypthoy_3EE49121300384FF3C82EB9A1F06F288-2013-05.pcap
2013-05-12 BIN_PassAlert_B4A1368515C6C39ACEF63A4BC368EDB2-2013-05-13
2013-05-12 BIN_HorstProxy_EFE5529D697174914938F4ABF115F762-2013-05-13-pcap
2013-05-12 BIN_Bitcoinminer_12E717293715939C5196E604591A97DF-2013-05-12-pcap
2013-05-07 BIN_ZeroAccess_Sirefef_29A35124ABEAD63CD8DB2BBB469CBC7A_2013-05-pcapc
2013-05-05 BIN_PowerLoader_4497A231DA9BD0EEA327DDEC4B31DA12_2013-05-pcap
2013-05-05 BIN_GameThief_ECBA0FEB36F9EF975EE96D1694C8164C_2013-03-pcap
2013-05-05 BIN_PowerLoader_4497A231DA9BD0EEA327DDEC4B31DA12_2013-05-pcap
2013-04-27 EK_BIN_Blackhole_leadingto_Medfos_0512E73000BCCCE5AFD2E9329972208A_2013-04-pcap
2013-04-26 -- BIN_Citadel_3D6046E1218FB525805E5D8FDC605361-2013-04-samp
BIN_CitadelPacked_2012-05.pcap
BIN_CitadelUnpacked_2012-05.pcap
BIN_Cutwail_284Fb18Fab33C93Bc69Ce392D08Fd250_2012-10.pcap
BIN_Darkmegi_2012-04.pcap
BIN_DarknessDDoS_v8g_F03Bc8Dcc090607F38Ffb3A36Ccacf48_2011-01.pcap-
BIN_dirtjumper_2011-10.pcap
BIN_DNSChanger_2011-12.pcap
BIN_Drowor_worm_0f015bb8e2f93fd7076f8d178df2450d_2013-04.pcap
BIN_Googledocs_macadocs_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Imaut_823e9bab188ad8cb30c14adc7e67066d.pcap
BIN_IRCbot_c6716a417f82ccedf0f860b735ac0187_2013-04.pcap
BIN_Kelihos_aka_Nap_0feaaa4adc31728e54b006ab9a7e6afa.pcap
BIN_LoadMoney_MailRu_dl_4e801b46068b31b82dac65885a58ed9e_2013-04 .pcap
BIN_purplehaze-2012-01.pcap
BIN_ponyloader_470a6f47de43eff307a02f53db134289.pcap
BIN_Ramnitpcap_2012-01.pcap
BIN_Reedum_0ca4f93a848cf01348336a8c6ff22daf_2013-03.pcap
BIN_SpyEye_2010-02.pcap
BIN_Stabuniq_F31B797831B36A4877AA0FD173A7A4A2_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Tbot_23AAB9C1C462F3FDFDDD98181E963230_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Tbot_2E1814CCCF0C3BB2CC32E0A0671C0891_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Tbot_5375FB5E867680FFB8E72D29DB9ABBD5_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Tbot_A0552D1BC1A4897141CFA56F75C04857_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Tbot_FC7C3E087789824F34A9309DA2388CE5_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Tinba_2012-06.pcap
BIN_Vobfus_634AA845F5B0B519B6D8A8670B994906_2012-12.pcap
BIN_Xpaj_2012-05.pcap
BIN_ZeroAccess_3169969E91F5FE5446909BBAB6E14D5D_2012-10.pcap
BIN_ZeusGameover_2012-02.pcap
BIN_Zeus_2010-12.pcap
EK_Blackholev1_2012-03.pcap
EK_Blackholev1_2012-08.pcap
EK_Blackholev2_2012-09.pcap
EK_Blackhole_Java_CVE-2012-4681_2012-08.pcap
EK_Phoenix_2012-04.pcap
EK_Smokekt150(Malwaredontneedcoffee)_2012-09.pcap - credit malware.dontneedcoffee.com

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Hollis Hills Jewish Center

"Odysseus is a tool designed for testing the security of web applications. Odysseus is a proxy server, which acts as a man-in-the-middle during an HTTP session. A typical HTTP proxy will relay packets to and from a client browser and a web server. Odysseus will intercept an HTTP session's data in either direction and give the user the ability to alter the data before transmission. For example, during a normal HTTP SSL connection a typical proxy will relay the session between the server and the client and allow the two end nodes to negotiate SSL. In contrast, when in intercept mode, Odysseus will pretend to be the server and negotiate two SSL sessions, one with the client browser and another with the web server." read more...

Download: http://www.bindshell.net/tools/odysseus

HHJC Synagogue Family

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Hacking Freemium Games - The Evolution Of PC Game Cheating

A little bit of history

The different types of cheats (on PC)

Cheat codes

Edit memory

Code injection

Saved game editor

Hacking game server

Network traffic hacking

Why cheating becomes more critical (and challenging)?

Freemium games

Hack all the freemium games!

Noob start

Beginners start - Cheat engine

Encrypt memory - applications at financial institutions

Moral of the story

Read more

Collection Of Pcap Files From Malware Analysis

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Odysseus

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