ghidra_bridge VS OpenSSL

I am stuck with an application written in Python2, where porting it to Python3 is difficult – if it was just the Python language changes it wouldn't be a big issue, but a third party library we heavily rely on decided that Python2->3 would be a good opportunity to completely redesign their API. Getting the application to handle that third party API redesign is a big task and thus far nobody has had the bandwidth/pain-tolerance/etc to undertake it.

But recently we've been finding other libraries we use need to be upgraded for various reasons, but the new versions we need to upgrade to are now Python3-only. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Until I discovered https://github.com/justfoxing/jfx_bridge – a Python2-to-3 RPC bridge. So now the Python2 app spawns a Python3 subprocess to host some of its libraries which it accesses over RPC. Ugly as hell but for now the least worst option. My hope is we can gradually transition more and more of the app on to the Python3 side of the bridge, and maybe eventually the Python2 side (and the bridge) can be jettisoned.

Which also led me to discover https://github.com/justfoxing/ghidra_bridge – this Python2 app is nothing to do with Ghidra (it is CPython whereas Ghidra is Jython), but I've been mucking around with Ghidra, and being able to write Python3 to control it is a better experience than Python2. I hate the 2<->3 mental context switching I'm forced into and would like as little of it as possible.

If anyone is interested in other language support in Ghidra, you should definitely check out Jason Leasure's ghidraal project and the python 3 bridge by justfoxing too. Between them there is Python 3, Ruby, R, and Javascript support.

ENV OPENSSL_PREFIX=/opt/openssl ENV SSL_CERT_FILE=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt WORKDIR /tmp RUN git clone --branch OpenSSL_1_0_2n https://github.com/openssl/openssl.git RUN cd openssl RUN ./config shared --prefix=$OPENSSL_PREFIX --openssldir=$OPENSSL_PREFIX/ssl RUN make RUN make install RUN rvm install 2.6.0 -C --with-openssl-dir=$OPENSSL_PREFIX ENV PATH /usr/local/rvm/bin:$PATH RUN rvm --default use ruby-2.6.0 ENV PATH /usr/local/rvm/bin:/usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.6.0/bin:$PATH ENV GEM_HOME /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-2.6.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0

Today, April 7th, 2024, marks the 10-year anniversary since CVE-2014-0160 was published. This security vulnerability known as "Heartbleed" was a flaw in the OpenSSL cryptography software, the most popular option to implement Transport Layer Security (TLS). In more layman's terms, if you type https:// in your browser address bar, chances are high that you are interacting with OpenSSL.

At this point I pretty much understand the entire process on how the xz backdoor came to be: its execution stages, extraction from binary "test" files etc. But one thing puzzles me: how can the ifunc mechanism be used to replace something like RSA_public_decrypt? Granted this probably stems from my lack of understanding of ifunc, but I was under the impression that in order for the ifunc mechanism to work in your code, you have to explicitly mark specific function with multiple implementations with __attribute__ ((ifunc ("the_resolver_function"))). Looking at the source code of the RSA function in question, ifunc attribute isn't present:

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/master/crypto/rsa/rsa_crpt.c#L51

So how does the backdoor actually replace the call? Does this means that the ifunc mechanism can be used to override pretty much anything on the system?

OpenSSL and Go crypt/tls has no support yet, so none of the webservers that depend on them support it. Apache, Nginx, and Caddy, they all need upstream ECH support first.

- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/7482

- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/22938

- https://github.com/golang/go/issues/63369

If I'm understanding the draft correctly, I think the webserver you're hosting your sites on would need it implemented as it requires private keys and ECH configuration. In the example of nginx since it uses openssl, openssl would need to implement it. I found an issue on their Github but it's still open: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/7482

I confirmed that the systm was on 1.1.1f with openssl version command. Hmm...... I check the openssl version in the repo with apt list... LOL package names wernt helpful. finally went to the repo pages and found that its still on 1.1.1f, https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssl. Meenwhile I looked up the version history on https://www.openssl.org/ and saw that 1.1.1v was released at the beginning of this month... ok. I can understand it it was out less then 30 days. I looked up when f came out, end of MARCH 2020. NEARLY 3-1/2 YEARS