Using Binject

Binject is a sweet multipart library, making up several tools for code-caving and backdooring binaries via golang. The project was originally inspired as a rewrite of the backdoor factory in go and now that it’s functional this post will show you how to use it. In this post we are going to explore how you can use the library operationally for a number of tasks. We will start with an example of using some of the command line tools included with the project for the arbitrary backdooring of files. Next we will look at using the library to backdoor a file programmatically. Finally we will use the bdf caplet with bettercap to backdoor some binaries being transmitted on the network, on-the-fly. I want to give a shout out to the homie Vyrus, as a lot of this was inspired by him but in non-public projects, so I can’t link to his stuff. I also want to give a shoutout to Awgh, as he’s been an awesome mentor and powerhouse in implementing a lot of the Binject features. Below you can see the binjection command line tool being used to backdoor an arbitrary windows PE, on Linux. In the next section we will explore some of the command line features of Binject.

Using the command line tools included with Binject is pretty straightforward; the main library Binject/binjection contains a command line interface tool that exposes all of the existing functionality for backdooring files on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Above we can see go-donut being used to turn a gscript program into position independent shellcode, then we use the binjection command line tool to backdoor a Windows PE (a .exe file), all on a Linux OS. The binjection cli tool takes 3 main command line flags, “-f” to specify the target file to backdoor, “-s” to specify a file containing your shellcode in a raw bytecode format, and “-o” specifying where to write your new backdoor file. Optionally you can give a “-l” to write the output to a logfile instead of standard out. You can also specify the injection method to use, although the tool only supports a very limited and mostly default set currently. The binjection cli tool will automatically detect the executable type and backdoor it accordingly. Another library and command line tool included with the framework is Binject/go-donut, which is essentially just a port of TheWover/donut. We can see this being used above to prepare another program to be embedded in our target executable. I really like both of these command line tools because it’s easy to cross compile them for linux or macOS, giving me a really convenient way to generate my target shellcode regardless of what OS I’m operating from. Having the entire tool chain in go allows me to easily move my tools to whatever operating system or use them all together in the same codebase. Even if you’re not familiar with go, you can just as easily compile the cli tools and script them together with something like bash or powershell. Below we can see the binjection cli tool being used to backdoor ELF executables on Linux.

Using binjection programmatically as a go library is also super simple and arguably far more useful because you can now integrate it into so many more projects. The library calls are just as straight forward, basically a single function call depending on the binary type your backdooring. Here we can see it as a standalone example for others to use. We can also see it being implemented here for Windows in Sliver, a golang based c2 framework with tons of features. We can also use binjection in gscript, although it requires this embarrassingly small shim interface. This is insanely powerful functionality to be able to ship in an implant binary, as the implant can now backdoor, already persisted, legitimate binaries on the target system. You can even break down the supporting libraries and use other parts of Binject, like Binject/debug, as a triage tool, which we demonstrate with bintriage. Finally, to bring the project full circle, Binject has been integrated with bettercap for the on-the-fly backdooring of files on the network. It currently accomplishes this using bettercap’s ARP spoofing module, the network proxy module, and a helper tool to manage the file queue, making the whole process really clean. Using the integration is easy with the Binject/backdoorfactory helper tool. Simply follow these usage instructions, which just involves installing all of the necessary prerequisite tools, and then Binject/backdoorfactory will spit out the caplet and command you need you need for bettercap. You can see a demo of all of this together in the video at the end. So now you have a pretty good idea of some different ways you can use Binject. We also encourage people to submit pull requests to the library with new injection methods or even further enumerating the executable types. There is still a lot of work to be done here but you can use the library currently to great effect.