Linux Shellcode “Hello, World!”

Question

I have the following working NASM code:

global _start

section .text

_start:
    mov eax, 0x4
    mov ebx, 0x1
    mov ecx, message
    mov edx, 0xF
    int 0x80

    mov eax, 0x1
    mov ebx, 0x0
    int 0x80

section .data
    message: db "Hello, World!", 0dh, 0ah

which prints "Hello, World!\n" to the screen. I also have the following C wrapper which contains the previous NASM object code:

char code[] =
"\xb8\x04\x00\x00\x00"
"\xbb\x01\x00\x00\x00"
"\xb9\x00\x00\x00\x00"
"\xba\x0f\x00\x00\x00"
"\xcd\x80\xb8\x01\x00"
"\x00\x00\xbb\x00\x00"
"\x00\x00\xcd\x80";

int main(void)
{
    (*(void(*)())code)();
}

However when I run the code, it seems like the assembler code isn't executed, but the program exits fine. Any ideas?

Thanks

Answer 1

When you inject this shellcode, you don't know what is at message:

mov ecx, message

in the injected process, it can be anything but it will not be "Hello world!\r\n" since it is in the data section while you are dumping only the text section. You can see that your shellcode doesn't have "Hello world!\r\n":

"\xb8\x04\x00\x00\x00"
"\xbb\x01\x00\x00\x00"
"\xb9\x00\x00\x00\x00"
"\xba\x0f\x00\x00\x00"
"\xcd\x80\xb8\x01\x00"
"\x00\x00\xbb\x00\x00"
"\x00\x00\xcd\x80";

This is common problem in shellcode development, the way to work around it is this way:

global _start

section .text

_start:
    jmp MESSAGE      ; 1) lets jump to MESSAGE

GOBACK:
    mov eax, 0x4
    mov ebx, 0x1
    pop ecx          ; 3) we are poping into `ecx`, now we have the
                     ; address of "Hello, World!\r\n" 
    mov edx, 0xF
    int 0x80

    mov eax, 0x1
    mov ebx, 0x0
    int 0x80

MESSAGE:
    call GOBACK       ; 2) we are going back, since we used `call`, that means
                      ; the return address, which is in this case the address 
                      ; of "Hello, World!\r\n", is pushed into the stack.
    db "Hello, World!", 0dh, 0ah

section .data

Now dump the text section:

$ nasm -f elf shellcode.asm
$ ld shellcode.o -o shellcode
$ ./shellcode 
Hello, World!
$ objdump -d shellcode

shellcode:     file format elf32-i386


Disassembly of section .text:

08048060 <_start>:
 8048060:   e9 1e 00 00 00   jmp    8048083 <MESSAGE>

08048065 <GOBACK>:
 8048065:   b8 04 00 00 00   mov    $0x4,%eax
 804806a:   bb 01 00 00 00   mov    $0x1,%ebx
 804806f:   59               pop    %ecx
 8048070:   ba 0f 00 00 00   mov    $0xf,%edx
 8048075:   cd 80            int    $0x80
 8048077:   b8 01 00 00 00   mov    $0x1,%eax
 804807c:   bb 00 00 00 00   mov    $0x0,%ebx
 8048081:   cd 80            int    $0x80

08048083 <MESSAGE>:
 8048083:   e8 dd ff ff ff   call   8048065 <GOBACK>
 8048088:   48               dec    %eax                    <-+
 8048089:   65               gs                               |
 804808a:   6c               insb   (%dx),%es:(%edi)          |
 804808b:   6c               insb   (%dx),%es:(%edi)          |
 804808c:   6f               outsl  %ds:(%esi),(%dx)          |
 804808d:   2c 20            sub    $0x20,%al                 |
 804808f:   57               push   %edi                      |
 8048090:   6f               outsl  %ds:(%esi),(%dx)          |
 8048091:   72 6c            jb     80480ff <MESSAGE+0x7c>    |
 8048093:   64               fs                               |
 8048094:   21               .byte 0x21                       |
 8048095:   0d               .byte 0xd                        |
 8048096:   0a               .byte 0xa                      <-+

$

The lines I marked are our "Hello, World!\r\n" string:

$ printf "\x48\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f\x2c\x20\x57\x6f\x72\x6c\x64\x21\x0d\x0a"
Hello, World!

$ 

So our C wrapper will be:

char code[] = 

    "\xe9\x1e\x00\x00\x00"  //          jmp    8048083 <MESSAGE>
    "\xb8\x04\x00\x00\x00"  //          mov    $0x4,%eax
    "\xbb\x01\x00\x00\x00"  //          mov    $0x1,%ebx
    "\x59"                  //          pop    %ecx
    "\xba\x0f\x00\x00\x00"  //          mov    $0xf,%edx
    "\xcd\x80"              //          int    $0x80
    "\xb8\x01\x00\x00\x00"  //          mov    $0x1,%eax
    "\xbb\x00\x00\x00\x00"  //          mov    $0x0,%ebx
    "\xcd\x80"              //          int    $0x80
    "\xe8\xdd\xff\xff\xff"  //          call   8048065 <GOBACK>
    "Hello wolrd!\r\n";     // OR       "\x48\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f\x2c\x20\x57"
                            //          "\x6f\x72\x6c\x64\x21\x0d\x0a"


int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    (*(void(*)())code)();

    return 0;
}

Lets test it:

$ gcc test.c -o test
$ ./test 
Hello wolrd!
$ 

it works.

Answer 2

As BSH mentioned, your shellcode does not contain the message bytes. Jumping to the MESSAGE label and calling the GOBACK routine just before defining the msg byte was a good move as the address of msg would be on the top of the stack as return address which could be popped to ecx, where the address of msg is stored.

But both yours and BSH's code has a slight limitation. It contains NULL bytes ( \x00 ) which would be considered as end of string when dereferenced by the function pointer.

There is a smart way around this. The values you store into eax, ebx and edx are small enough to be directly written into the lower nibbles of the respective registers in one go by accessing al, bl and dl respectively. The upper nibble may contain junk value so it can be xored.

b8 04 00 00 00 ------ mov $0x4,%eax

becomes

b0 04          ------ mov $0x4,%al
31 c0          ------ xor    %eax,%eax

Unlike the prior instruction set, the new instruction set does not contain any NULL byte.

So, the final program looks like this :

global _start

section .text

_start:
jmp message

proc:
    xor eax, eax
    mov al, 0x04
    xor ebx, ebx
    mov bl, 0x01
    pop ecx
    xor edx, edx
    mov dl, 0x16
    int 0x80

    xor eax, eax
    mov al, 0x01
    xor ebx, ebx
    mov bl, 0x01   ; return 1
    int 0x80

message:
    call proc
    msg db " y0u sp34k 1337 ? "

section .data

Assembling and linking :

$ nasm -f elf hello.asm -o hello.o
$ ld -s -m elf_i386 hello.o -o hello
$ ./hello
 y0u sp34k 1337 ? $ 

Now extract the shellcode from the hello binary :

$ for i in `objdump -d hello | tr '\t' ' ' | tr ' ' '\n' | egrep '^[0-9a-f]{2}$' ` ; do echo -n "\\x$i" ; done

output:

\xeb\x19\x31\xc0\xb0\x04\x31\xdb\xb3\x01\x59\x31\xd2\xb2\x12\xcd\x80\x31\xc0\xb0\x01\x31\xdb\xb3\x01\xcd\x80\xe8\xe2\xff\xff\xff\x20\x79\x30\x75\x20\x73\x70\x33\x34\x6b\x20\x31\x33\x33\x37\x20\x3f\x20

Now we can have our driver program to launch the shellcode.

#include <stdio.h>

char shellcode[] = "\xeb\x19\x31\xc0\xb0\x04\x31\xdb"
                   "\xb3\x01\x59\x31\xd2\xb2\x12\xcd"
                   "\x80\x31\xc0\xb0\x01\x31\xdb\xb3"
                   "\x01\xcd\x80\xe8\xe2\xff\xff\xff"
                   "\x20\x79\x30\x75\x20\x73\x70\x33"
                   "\x34\x6b\x20\x31\x33\x33\x37\x20"
                   "\x3f\x20";


int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    (*(void(*)())shellcode)();
    return 0;
}

There are certain security features in modern compilers like NX protection which prevents execution of code in data segment or stack. So we should explicitly specify the compiler to disable these.

$ gcc -g -Wall -fno-stack-protector -z execstack launcher.c -o launcher

Now the launcher can be invoked to launch the shellcode.

$ ./launcher
 y0u sp34k 1337 ? $ 

For more complex shellcodes, there would be another hurdle. Modern Linux kernels have ASLR or Address Space Layout Randomization You may need to disable this before your inject the shellcode, especially when it is through buffer overflows.

root@localhost:~# echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space