Introduction
This is a quick follow up post to Data Masking that discussed how one might use the Fisher-Yates shuffle and a DRBG to mask shellcode. There’s a lot of ways to mask data that don’t involve using an XOR operation but despite being relatively simple to implement are rarely used. You can use involutions, partial encryption, base encoding, simple arithmetic using addition and subtraction or modular variants. In the past, I’ve found components of block and stream ciphers to be a good source of techniques because the operations need to be invertible. In this post we’ll look at how easy it is to use byte substitution.
Substitution Box
Although substitution ciphers date back to ancient times, DES was first to use fixed s-box arrays for encrypting data. Since then, such non-linear operations have become a standard component of many block ciphers. To implement, we perform the following steps:
- Initialize 256-byte array we call “s-box” using [0, 255]
- Shuffle s-box using random seed.
- Create inverse s-box.
This S-Box can then be used for masking data and the inverse can be used for unmasking. The reason we use a random seed to shuffle the s-box is so that the masked data is always different. Here’s a snippet of C code to demonstrate…
//
// simple byte substitution using fisher-yates shuffle and DRBG
//
typedef struct _mask_ctx {
uint8_t sbox[256], sbox_inv[256];
} mask_ctx;
void
init_mask(mask_ctx *c) {
uint8_t seed[ENCRYPT_KEY_LEN];
// initialise sbox
for (int i=0; i<256; i++) {
c->sbox[i] = (uint8_t)i;
}
// initialise seed/key
random(seed, ENCRYPT_KEY_LEN);
// shuffle sbox using random seed.
shuffle(seed, c->sbox, 256);
// create inverse
for (int i=0; i<256; i++) {
c->sbox_inv[c->sbox[i]] = i;
}
}
// mask buf
void
encode(mask_ctx *c, void *buf, size_t len) {
uint8_t *x = (uint8_t*)buf;
for (size_t i=0; i<len; i++) {
x[i] = c->sbox[x[i]];
}
}
// unmask buf
void
decode(mask_ctx *c, void *buf, size_t len) {
uint8_t *x = (uint8_t*)buf;
for (size_t i=0; i<len; i++) {
x[i] = c->sbox_inv[x[i]];
}
}
void
dump(const char *str, void *buf, size_t len) {
uint8_t *x = (uint8_t*)buf;
printf("\n%s:\n", str);
for (size_t i=0; i<len; i++) {
printf(" %02X", x[i]);
}
}
int
main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
mask_ctx c;
uint8_t buf[32];
// using random bytes here for testing..
random(buf, sizeof(buf));
init_mask(&c);
dump("raw", buf, sizeof(buf));
encode(&c, buf, sizeof(buf));
dump("encoded", buf, sizeof(buf));
decode(&c, buf, sizeof(buf));
dump("decoded", buf, sizeof(buf));
return 0;
}
And here’s the output of the program.
You can simplify the above example by just using the srand(), rand() functions and a modulo operator instead of a DRBG. See the full example here.
Since it’s a bit more complicated than it needs to be. What we can do is repurpose the key initialization of RC4 and derive an inverse lookup table from that. Here’s a little more code to demonstrate.
typedef struct _mask_ctx {
uint8_t sbox[256];
uint8_t key[16];
uint8_t sbox_inv[256];
} mask_ctx;
// initialise using RC4
void
init_mask(mask_ctx *c) {
// initialise sbox
for (size_t i=0; i<256; i++) {
c->sbox[i] = (uint8_t)i;
}
// shuffle sbox
for (size_t i=0, j=0; i<256; i++) {
j = (j + (c->sbox[i] + c->key[i % 16])) & 255;
uint8_t t = c->sbox[i] & 255;
c->sbox[i] = c->sbox[j];
c->sbox[j] = t;
}
// create inverse
for (size_t i=0; i<256; i++) {
c->sbox_inv[c->sbox[i]] = i;
}
}
// mask or unmask
void
mask(uint8_t *sbox, size_t len, void *buf) {
uint8_t *in = (uint8_t*)buf;
uint8_t *out = (uint8_t*)buf;
for (size_t i=0; i<len; i++) {
out[i] = sbox[in[i]];
}
}
In this case, mask() performs both encoding and decoding depending on the sbox array passed to it. And just for fun the 32-bit assembly code…
;
; Simple obfuscation using byte substitution.
;
bits 32
%ifndef BIN
global _init_mask_x86
global init_mask_x86
global _mask_x86
global mask_x86
%endif
section .text
;
; void init_mask_x86(mask_ctx*c);
;
_init_mask_x86:
init_mask_x86:
pushad
mov edi, [esp+32+4]
push edi
pop esi
xor eax, eax ; i=0
initialise_sbox:
stosb ; c->sbox[i]=i
inc al ; i++
jnz initialise_sbox ; i<256
cdq ; j=0
shuffle_sbox:
; j = (j + (c->sbox[i] + c->key[i % 16])) & 255;
movzx ecx, al ; t = i % 16
and cl, 15 ;
add dl, [edi+ecx] ; j += c->key[i % 16]
mov cl, [esi+eax] ; t = c->sbox[i]
add dl, cl ; j += c->sbox[i]
xchg cl, [esi+edx] ; swap(t, s[j])
mov [esi+eax], cl
inc al ; i++
jnz shuffle_sbox ; i<256
add edi, 16
create_inverse:
mov dl, [esi+eax] ; sbox_inv[sbox[i]] = i
mov [edi+edx], al ;
inc al
jnz create_inverse
popad
ret
;
; void mask_x86(void *sbox, size_t inlen, void *inbuf);
;
mask_x86:
_mask_x86:
pushad
lea esi, [esp+32+4]
lodsd
xchg ebx, eax ; bx = sbox
lodsd
xchg ecx, eax ; cx = inlen
lodsd
xchg esi, eax ; si = inbuf
push esi
pop edi
mask_loop:
lodsb ; al = in[i]
xlatb ; al = sbox[al]
stosb ; out[i] = al
loop mask_loop
popad
ret
Summary
There’s lots of ways to obfuscate data. Most people will use an XOR but this is a safe indicator of obfuscation and a way to detect it. Using byte substitution only requires a byte-to-byte mapping and probably harder to detect.
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