BadBarcode: Start a shell by scanning a boarding pass

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/badbarcode-project-shows-customized-boarding-passes-can-hack-computers

by ProZsolt • 11 years ago

15 13 11 years ago

motherboard.vice.com

ProZsolt2• 11 years ago

Demo: https://twitter.com/tombkeeper/status/664723564717715456

dang• 11 years ago

We changed the URL from http://www.slideshare.net/PacSecJP/hyperchem-ma-badbarcode-e... which appears not to render correctly.

slaesche2• 11 years ago

What is special about this?

voltagex_3• 11 years ago

“General speaking, we can make [a barcode scanner] to 'type' any keys to the host system, not only the 0-9 and a-z,” Yu said. He claims this lets someone create a boarding pass to “execute any command on computer.”

At a guess, they encoded Win+R cmd <enter> into a barcode. It's a neat trick with big potential.

slaesche2• 11 years ago

I'm still confused. This seems completely trivial.

brent_maxwell• 11 years ago

Agreed. I used to work in a library, and was able to do something similar with our scanners.

The only thing "new" might be the recognition of being able to pass "alt-?" key combos through PDF-417 barcodes, which are becoming more and more ubiquitous, while the scanners still just pretend to be keyboards.

paulasmuth3• 11 years ago

Am is missing something or is the presented "attack" really trivial? They use a barcode scanner connected as a virtual keyboard to directly enter keystrokes into the windows shell - I imagine the barcode simply reads "CTRL, T, S, O, M, E, C, O, M, M, A, N, D".

It's not surprising that it works to me -- I think it's the intended behaviour.

The article suggests the fact that barcodes can contain arbitrary (non-printable) ascii characters is the discovery of a new vulnerability which can be used to attack a large number of real-world POS/airport check-in systems, but doesn't give a single example or proof for that. This seems like complete speculation on the presence of input handling bugs in systems connected to barcode scanners presented as a fact.

voltagex_3• 11 years ago

How do you know that FooBar (TM) Barcode Scanner isn't presenting as a HID to the underlying system? The keyboard's not accessible so the kiosk mode probably isn't protected against alt-F4, ctrl-alt-delete etc.

paulasmuth3• 11 years ago

I could only speculate how specific applications (e.g. at airports) are built.

However, if some specific vendor was susceptible to this attack, it would just be a stupid, obvious and easily fixable input handling bug in their product.

But the linked article doesn't even demonstrate such an attack against an actual application ("BadBarcode is not a vulnerability of a certain product"). Just a trivial "demo" where they use a virtual keyboard device to enter commands directly into a windows shell and then get excited that it works...

ProZsolt2• 11 years ago

Defcon presentation about barcodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT_gwl1drhc

BadBarcode: Start a shell by scanning a boarding pass

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