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Yet another plaintext attack to ZIP encryption scheme.

From: <alias(at)securityfocus.com>
Date: Fri Feb 07 2003 - 20:35:13 EST

Introduction


        The ZIP format is one of the most widely used compresion/archival programs on computers systems, its use is even more extended on Windows plataform, with WinZIP program.

Known Attacks


        The PKZIP encryption scheme have been proved to be weak in a lot of papers that are listed at the end of this paper. We found an other way to attack the encryption scheme using reversing enginiering in WinZIP IBDL32.dll.

        A known problem is to get valid plain text in order to do an attack using the "know plain text technic" [1]. Mikel Stay published at 2001 "ZIP Attack with Reduced Known-Plaintext" [2], that improved the firt attack, but the problem to get plaintext stil existed.

        Getting plaintext is so dificult because plaintext is on compression form and a minimum change on data would represent a great alteration, so if we didn't know a full file content included on zip file we couldn't do anything. We will discuse if deflating system is used the know plaintext attack, turns to be fearly easy.

The encrytion scheme


Do you need help?X

        Status change functions:

void update_keys(char p) {

        key0=crc32(key0, p);
        key1=key1 + (key0 & 0xff);
        key1=key1 * 134775813 + 1;
        key2=crc32(key2, key1>>24);

}

char decrypt_byte(char b) {

        unsigned short tmp;
        tmp=key2 | 2;
        return(tmp * (tmp^1)>>8);

}

        To inizializate the keys:

..

        key0=305419896;
        key1=591751049;
        key2=878082192;

        for(i=0 ; i
..

        To code a byte of data:

..

        tmp=byte^decrypt_byte(byte);
        update_keys(tmp);

..

        Besides ,12 random bytes are prepended to the compressed data in order to make plaintext attack more dificult. This bytes are very important to initializate the state of the stream code. Because if we know the state of the stream code on any time we can reverse until we get to the beginning.

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The attack


        Most ZIP coders use rand function to generate this 12 random bytes, but other zippers use own function, this is the case of WinZIP.

        Attacking this encryption scheme using this 12 prepended random bytes is not a new idea , [2] describes this kind of attack but a minimum of 5 files in a zip are needed in order to succeed.

        If we reverse engineering WinZIP rand(m generation code, we find the following code.

46c5a0     push    ebp
46c5a1     mov     ebp, esp
46c5a3     mov     eax, [IBDL32.dll:Seed]
46c5a8     mov     edx, eax
46c5aa     add     edx, edx
46c5ac     add     edx, eax
46c5ae     shl     edx, 2
46c5b1     add     edx, eax
46c5b3     mov     ecx, edx
46c5b5     shl     ecx, 4
46c5b8     add     ecx, eax
46c5ba     mov     edx, ecx
46c5bc     shl     edx, 8
46c5bf     sub     edx, eax
46c5c1     shl     edx, 2
46c5c4     lea     ecx, [eax+edx]
46c5c7     mov     [IBDL32.dll:Seed], ecx
46c5cd     mov     eax, [IBDL32.dll:Seed]
46c5c2     sar     eax, 10h
46c5c5     mov     ecx, eax
46c5c7     and     ch, 7fh
46c5ca     movzx   edx, cx
46c5cd     mov     eax, edx
46c5cf     ret

        It seems to be an ofuscated code, but if we analize this we can see
that C code may be like.
        unsigned short rand()
        {
                seed=0x343fD * seed;
                return ((seed >> 16)&0x7fff);
        }

        A normal rand implementation looks like:

        unsigned short rand()
        {
                seed=0x343fD * seed + 0x269ec3;
                return ((seed >> 16)&0x7fff);
        }

        Initialy seems that the person who wrote this code forgot to add
0x269ec3 to seed, but this can leed to a security problem, because the posible secuences are reduced from 2^(12*8) to 2^(3*8). We will discuss the concrete mathematical apects of rand on a future paper, now we will show how to crack zip file using this miss.

        Reducing the secuences makes more easy to do a bruteforce attack and then gess the state of the stream coder (key0, key1, key2). We can return to initial state using this known formules form pkcrack source code (stage2 line 175):

    /* The equation from section 3.3 is used twice here:
     * (1) key1_{n-1} + LSB(key0_n) = rhs = (key1_n - 1) * INVCONST
     * and
     * (2) key1_{n-2} + LSB(key0_{n-1}) = (key1_{n-1} - 1) * INVCONST
Can we help you?X
* * At this point we know key1_n, MSB(key1_{n-1}) and MSB(key1_{n-2}). * * From (2) follows * MSB(key1_{n-2}) = MSB((key1_{n-1} - 1) * INVCONST - LSB(key0_{n-1})) * Inserting (1) yields * MSB(key1_{n-2}) = MSB((rhs - 1)*INVCONST - * LSB(key0_n)*INVCONST - LSB(key0_{n-1})) * which means that either * (a) MSB(key1_{n-2}) = MSB((rhs - 1)*INVCONST) - * MSB(LSB(key0_n)*INVCONST - LSB(key0_{n-1})) * or * (b) MSB(key1_{n-2}) = MSB((rhs - 1)*INVCONST) - * MSB(LSB(key0_n)*INVCONST - LSB(key0_{n-1})) - 1 * * It can easily be verified that for any two bytes b1, b2: * MSB( b1*INVCONST + b2 ) = MSB( b1*INVCONST ) * (simple exhaustive test on 2^16 combinations) * * We have computed diff = MSB((rhs - 1)*INVCONST) - MSB(key1_{n-2}). * Now all we have to do is find values for key0_n so that * (following from (1)) * MSB(key1_{n-1}) = MSB(rhs-LSB(key0_n)) * and (following from (a) and (b)) either * diff = MSB(LSB(key0_n)*INVCONST) * or * diff = MSB(LSB(key0_n)*INVCONST) + 1 * * Candidate values are selected using the precomputed lookup table mTab2. */

Proof of concept


        We have been able to exploit this weak random generation on ZIP files with more that 3 files (12*3 => 36 bytes of known plaintext), but with less than two hours on a Pentium 500Mhz with 128Mb.

        Attacks to ZIPs with less than 3 files might be also posible because in WinZIP the two CRC most important bytes are estored within the 12 "random" numbers.

Can't find what you're looking for?X

        tocrack.zip is a file created with WinZIP 8.0, the password is "&THPOL101%ISLAME@|1" whis is a 19 length password , ( wich impossible to crack if we bruteforce the password ) , but what we are bruteforcing is the 3 keys that are generated with the password.

        [rmn@mightsoft ~]$ zipinfo tocrack.zip
        Archive:  tocrack.zip   679 bytes   3 files
        -rw-rw-rw-  2.0 fat      138 T- defX  8-Feb-03 01:31 file3.txt
        -rw-rw-rw-  2.0 fat      163 T- defX  8-Feb-03 01:31 file2.txt
        -rw-rw-rw-  2.0 fat      270 T- defX  8-Feb-03 01:31 file1.txt
        3 files, 571 bytes uncompressed, 339 bytes compressed:  40.6%
        [rmn@mightsoft ~]$ ./zipproof -p tocrack.zip
        [*] generating posible secuences..  DONE.
Don't know where to look next?X
[*] reducing number of posible Key2.. DONE. [*] Bruteforcing: [-] Key2 => 0x6a54f21e [*] Generating initial keys: [-] Key0 => 0xaca8571c [-] Key1 => 0x439e8759 [-] Key2 => 0x508d8f22 [*] Tryng to get password.. Not found! [E] Is not posible to find a password for these keys, you can use findkeys tool (from pkcrack) to get it. [rmn@mightsoft ~]$ It was not posible to recover the password because it was too large,
but with that keys is very easy to extract data files from ZIP (using pkcrack zipdecrypt).
        [rmn@mightsoft ~]$ ./zipdecrypt 0xaca8571c 0x439e8759 0x508d8f22 tocrack2.zip result.zip
        Decrypting file1.txt (bb6c9531638e70d425ebe60b)... OK!
        Decrypting file2.txt (0f57542dbf0e18517a5cee0b)... OK!
        Decrypting file3.txt (2d2bc008f19607809298f90b)... OK!
Affected targets

        This problem is in IBDL32.dll, that is used in some ZIP compresors like the afore mentioned WinZIP.

Recomendations


        Even if this problem is not present in your ZIP compressor the ZIP encryption scheme is very weak and should not be used to encrypt sensitive data. Use zip and then encrypt with your favorite encryptation program.

Credits


        Mike Stevens - 
        Elisa Flanders - 

Greetz


        Eli Biham, Paul C. Kocher, Mikel Stay, for the papers.
        Peter Conrad, for pkcrack.
        Cocacola, for keeping us awake.

Bibliography


        [1] - "Known Plaintext Attack on the PKZIP Stream Cipher".
              Eli Biham and Paul C. Kocher

        [2] - "ZIP Atack with reduced Known-Plaintext".
              Mikel Stay

        [3] - PKZIP Specs: APPNOTE.txt.
Received on Sun Feb 9 19:01:44 2003

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Wed Aug 23 2006 - 14:07:38 EDT

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