What is the Purpose of brainpan.exe?
Brainpan.exe is an educational tool for security enthusiasts. It's a non-malicious program with vulnerabilities, used to learn about topics like buffer overflows.
I ran the brainpan.exe file on a Windows machine out of curiosity to understand its functionality.
It's important to emphasize that brainpan.exe lacks malicious intent. It operates by listening for incoming TCP connections on port 9999. From my Linux machine, I attempted to connect to this port, at which point it prompted me for a password. However, I didn't possess the correct password.
I tried various passwords in an attempt to gain access, but all I received in response was an ACCESS DENIED message, which left me puzzled.
I decided to investigate what was happening on the Windows side and discovered from the printed messages that the TCP server had indeed received my connection on port 9999 along with the password I provided, which was then copied to a buffer.
My next step was to locate the correct password. While analyzing the binary in Linux using a tool called strings, I came across a hard-coded string called shitstorm. The resulting string can be found in brainpan.txt.
With this newfound information, I attempted to connect to the TCP server using shitstorm as the password, which led to a ACCESS GRANTED message. However, the connection was terminated immediately after.
Once again, I returned to the Windows side to observe what was occurring. It became evident that all the input I had been sending to the TCP server was being directly copied into a buffer.
As the input string sent to the TCP server is directly copied into the buffer, it becomes imperative to test the TCP server for potential buffer overflow vulnerabilities.
Next, we'll explore the process of Spiking