802.

1x NAC & BYPASS

TECHNIQUES

Hack in Paris 2017

Valérian LEGRAND
 ABOUT
o Valérian LEGRAND, Security consultant and Penetration Tester at Orange
CyberDefense
o Breaking things is my job

o Why this research ?

o 802.1x often disabled for penetration tests
o Provides a good excuse for bad devs & admins
o “Great you found X critical vulnerabilities… but we disabled 802.1x for the
penetration test so it’s not that bad !”
o Needed for specific Red Team engagements

o Also, huge thanks for the help to :

o Andrei Dumitrescu (twitter : @_dracu_)
o Quentin Biguenet
o Florent “KASH” Lalegerie
o But also : Fabien, Nicolas, Pierre, Simon, Slim, etc…

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 WHAT WE GONNA TALK
ABOUT
Wired 802.1X
How the hell does it work ?

A Brief Overview
of 802.1X
Bypasses

FENRIR

Goddammit,
We Want Shells !

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 WIRED 802.1X

o IEEE standard originally created in 2001

o Physical port-based network access control

o The new device has to authenticate in order to access the network beyond the switch

o 3 roles involved

o SUPPLICANT : The new device

o AUTHENTICATOR : The switch (or Wireless AP)
o AUTHENTICATION SERVER : The server responsible for checking credentials
(Usually a RADIUS server)

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 THE HAPPY EAP FAMILY

o EAP = Extensible Authentication Protocol

o Defines authentication message formats
o LOTS of different formats
o EAP-MD5, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, EAP-PSK, etc…
o Some are very weak (Seriously, don’t use LEAP)

o EAP is NOT a wire protocol

o EAP messages are encapsulated by other protocols
o EAPoL = EAP over LAN
o PEAP = Protected EAP (mainly used on Windows systems)
o …

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 PORT-BASED ACCESS CONTROL
o The Authenticator defines 2 logical states per physical port
o Uncontrolled State
o Controlled State

o The uncontrolled state allows 802.1x frames only

o The Authenticator forwards the frames to the Authentication Server
o The controlled state acts like a “normal” port
o The network is fully accessible
o From this point, any packet can go wherever it needs to on the network without
authentication !

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 GIMME ACCESS, YOU SWITCH !

Standard base
authentication scheme

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A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF
802.1X BYPASSES

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 BYPASS BY DESIGN
Just a quick note about what is NOT
802.1x protection

o 802.1x only acts as a gatekeeper

o If a device is compromised when already connected to the LAN, 802.1x protection
is useless
o Social engineers don’t care about 802.1x (think malicious attachments for
example)

o 802.1x is not a solution to protect a LAN against BYOD hazards

o The compromised device will authenticate against 802.1x as usual

o It is also possible to retrieve credentials/certificates

on legitimate devices
o Mimikatz (Benjamin Delpy)

o Note : bruteforce is not possible

o Temporization rules on authentication server

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 SOME DEVICES JUST WANT TO
SEE THE NETWORK BURN
BYPASS - The easy way :
o Some devices do not support 802.1x
o You wish they do, but they don’t…
o Usually : old devices, low-grade equipment (printers), or very specific systems
(security cameras)
o These devices can be unplugged and their Ethernet port hijacked in order to access the
network without the need to authenticate

o Solution : MAC Authentication Bypass (MAB)

o (Seriously, who puts “bypass” in the name of a security feature ???)

o MAB uses the device’s MAC address to validate its identity

o The authenticator first tries to authenticate the new device by sending EAP Request-
Identity messages
o After 3 unsuccessful attempts, the authenticator falls back to MAB and sends the
device’s MAC address to the authentication server

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 THE REAL BYPASS :
TRAFFIC INJECTION
BYPASS - The hard way :
o 802.1x provides Network Access Control
o It provides authentication over who can access the network
o It does NOT provide traffic encryption (many people believe it does)
o It does NOT provide per-packet authentication

January August
2001 2005 2005 2011 2011

Standard Steve Riley Abb (Gremwell blog) Alva ‘Skip’ Duckwall

creation HUB attack Marvin tool ebtables, iptables,
bridge
Extension of 802,1x-2001 to
« allow concurrent sessions »

o Traffic Injection : spoof a legitimate and authenticated supplicant’s MAC and IP address to
fake legitimate packets
o Still works today in a vast majority of cases !
o Especially works in traditional Windows environments
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FENRIR

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 FENRIR & TRAFFIC
INJECTION
o Traffic Injection is the most reliable technique to physically attack a 802.1x network

o This led to the development of FENRIR

o Traffic tapping and injection
o Stealth
o Auto-configuration
o Collision issue avoidance
o Modularity & extensibility
o Full control over the traffic
o Reverse connection capabilities
o Not developed in Java !

o The goal was to obtain a tool “out-of-the-box” that could be useful during a penetration
test (including Red Team)

o Requirements :
o A laptop with 2 physical interfaces (external netcards work great !)
o Python & Scapy
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 HOW IT WORKS

o We need that :
o Frames at “A” : appear to be coming from the legitimate host
o Frames at “B” : appear to be coming from the network
o Frames at “C” : appear to be addressed to the legitimate host
o Frames at “D” : appear to be addressed to the network

o FENRIR captures frames on both physical interfaces and rewrites headers to make the
FENRIR host disappear
o Frames from/to the legitimate host are forwarded
o (You can also do whatever you want to do on them too here)
o Frames from/to FENRIR are rewritten

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 HOW IT WORKS

o Step 1 :
o FENRIR acts as a wire and let the legitimate device authenticate itself to the switch
Switch’s port state changes from uncontrolled to controlled

o Step 1.5 : optional automatic configuration

o Passive tapping to gather legitimate host’s MAC/IP addresses, TTL, etc…

o Step 2 :
o FENRIR will perform per frame analysis (for legitimate and rogue hosts’ frames)
o Frames from/to rogue host will be rewritten
We need to keep the legitimate host’s network access up in order to bypass
periodic re-authentications
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HOW IT WORKS

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 HOW IT WORKS

From : 192.168.1.42 : 5555

To : 192.168.1.10 : 443

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 HOW IT WORKS

From : 192.168.1.10 : 443

To : 192.168.1.42 : 5555

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 HOW IT WORKS

From : 192.168.1.42 : 35180

To : 192.168.201.30 : 80

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 HOW IT WORKS

From : 192.168.201.30 : 80
To : 192.168.1.42 : 35180

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 HOW IT WORKS

From : 192.168.201.30 : 80
To : 192.168.1.32 : 35180

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FENRIR - DEMO

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 GODDAMMIT
WE WANT SHELLS

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 REVERSE CONNECTIONS

o FENRIR provides the possibility to capture reverse connections (connections initiated from
the network)
o Useful for :
o Reverse shells
o Fake servers (think Responder for example)
o …

o Rules system, “à la” iptables that can be added/deleted on the fly to allow interception of
specific frames

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 GOING WILD

o Once FENRIR is set up, you find yourself in a perfect MitM spot
o A whole new world of network fun !

o Attack modules ?
o Injecting malicious exe on the wire
o Modifying network traffic for the legitimate host
o Responder
o …

o Classic attacks
o FENRIR works with all TCP/UDP tools
(and new protocols can be added)
o nmap
o netcat
o Metasploit
o CrackmapExec
o Empire
o …

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GIMME SHELLS
DEMO

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 TAKE AWAYS

o 802.1x protection is great (really it is), but is just a brick in the wall

o Ways of bypassing it exist - Do not consider your network secure because you
implemented it ! 802.1x =/= physical access protection

o 802.1x protects the door but not what goes through

o No encryption

(Does anyone realize this kid is eating sand ?!?)

https://github.com/Orange-Cyberdefense/fenrir
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