Making Mongo Cry: NoSQL for Penetration Testers

Making Mongo Cry: NoSQL for Penetration Testers

Russell Butturinitcstool@gmail.com

@tcstoolhax0r

DISCLAIMER

This presentation contains jokes from the movie Blazing Saddles. The presenter takes no responsibility if you haven’t

seen one of the greatest films ever made and find none of his jokes funny.

Let’s talk about Mongo…But not this Mongo…

THIS Mongo

However they’re kind of the same…

BigPowerful

Blindly trust input Do anything they’re told

Don’t understand encryption

• 49% of LinkedIn member profiles mentioning NoSQL technologies reference MongoDB1.

• Frequent releases with lots of big changes“Generally, changes in the release series (e.g. 2.2 to 2.4) mark the introduction of new features that may break backwards compatibility” 2.

• 10Gen is oblivious to security issues:“…We were on with…the MongoDB guys talking about the security of the

platform, and…it was really clear that they just didn’t care, because their customers weren’t asking for it.” -Rich Mogull, Security Weekly episode 3453.

1-http://www.mongodb.com/press/mongodb-certification-now-available-developers-and-dbas2-http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/release-notes/3-http://pauldotcom.com/wiki/index.php/Episode345

NoSQL Primer-Structure

Traditional SQL Mongo NoSQLDatabases

Tables

Columns/Types

Rows/Records

Databases

Collections

Documents

Key-Value pairs

NoSQL Primer-Data

Traditional SQL:

Mongo NoSQL:{“firstname” : “John”, “lastname” : “Doe”, “widgets” : 5}or{“firstname” : “John”, “lastname” : “Doe”, “widgets” : “five”}or{“firstname” : “John”, “lastname”, : “Doe”, “widgets” : 5, “foo” :

“bar”}

firstName (char) lastName (varchar) widgets (int)

John Doe 5

NoSQL Primer-Queries

Traditional SQL:SELECT email FROM users WHERE username = “joe”;

Mongo NoSQL:db.users.find({“username” : “joe”}, {“email” : 1})

The Good

• Built for performance• Highly scalable• Dynamic and flexible

The Bad

• No standards between NoSQL platforms (you have to choose the right DB for the right job)

• Security is weak and inconsistently applied

The Disturbing

• No authentication required by default• Weak or plaintext password storage• Cleartext network communication from client to server• No data encryption• “Use this only in trusted environments” (yeah right)• Reliance on the clients/drivers for security/functionality

NoSQL=No Auth (at least by default)

• Shodan: 33,575 Mongo default management ports exposed to the Internet (Feb 2014, Project Un1c0rn has more!)

• How many have the default of no authentication on?

And…

Total: 33,575 serversUnauthenticated: 18,979 (56.5%)

(Most of the others were offline, not authenticated)

RTFM:“The most effective way to reduce risk for MongoDB deployments is to run

your entire MongoDB deployment, including all MongoDB components (i.e. mongod, mongos and application instances) in a trusted environment.”

Conclusion

At least 18,979 people believe the Internet is a trusted environment.

Pen Testing Fun• /etc/mongod.conf-DB config

– The best part: Disable ALL authentication (except for the web interface for some reason) by commenting out auth=true and kicking the service

• Run() acts as a shell (from wherever you launch the Mongo client from)

• Entering a command with no parameters shows the Javascript being executed in the shell

• system.users-Usernames and weak password hashes• System.indexes-Key fields for speedy searching (probably important

stuff)• TCP 28017-Web management interface on by default (before 2.6)• An optional REST API when enabled allows for querying databases

through the web management

NoSQL = No Encryption

• Server/Client communications (including authentication) occur in PLAIN TEXT

• Passwords encrypted with MD5, but only use nonce over the wire (not at rest).

• Data encryption? You’re on your own.

(More on this to come…)

NoSQL = No SQL Injection (not)

Changing syntax != no vulnerabilitiesTraditional SQL Injection:

‘ OR 1=1 --

MongoDB $where query injection( <=2.2):a‘; return db.ddlkad.find(); var dummy=‘a

MongoDB $where query injection(<=2.4):a‘; return this.adfjda != djakflkdkl; var dummy=‘a

ora‘; return 1=1; var dummy=‘a

ora’; return true; var dummy = ‘a

Client Issues

PHP-What you Supply:http://somesite.com/id[$ne]=something

What PHP Sees:{“$ne”=>”something”}

What MongoDB Sees:“Give me everything back that is not equal to ‘something’”

Credit where Credit is Due

On 4/8/2014, MongoDB 2.6 was released:• New authentication methods including certificates and

external authentication sources.• Web interface is disabled by default.• Granular role based access control.• Auditing of schema, replica sets,

authentication/authorization, general operations.• Encryption in transit over SSL.• Encryption at rest provided by Gazzang at the database and

field levels.

But…• Still no authentication by default.• The default distribution of MongoDB 2.6 does NOT contain

support for SSL (recompile the whole thing locally or buy the enterprise version for 7,500 bucks).

• Gazzang encryption at rest isn’t free either.• Password hashing is still using the same weak algorithm as

previous versions.

NoSQLMap

• Project home page: www.nosqlmap.net• Automate all this stuff we just talked about

and more.• Always looking for more help!!!

Final Thoughts

• NoSQL databases can be a great tool, but you have to understand what you get.

• Devs can (and will) make the same mistakes they’ve been making for years.

• The default settings will get left on.• Good application layer security is key since the

database platform doesn’t provide any.

Questions?

NoSQLMap home page:www.nosqlmap.net

Project mailbox:nosqlmap@gmail.com

Me:@tcstoolhax0r, tcstool@gmail.com