Metasploit ~ Upgrade Command Shell into Meterpreter

As I said in my post about meterpreter. It is an advanced payload that can do a lot of advanced task after a system is exploited. But why if we can only get a normal command shell after exploitation? Its rather difficult of course to do the post exploitation step. But that doesn't matter now, because one of the newer features in the Metasploit Framework is its ability to upgrade a command shell payload to a Meterpreter shell payload once the sytem has been exploited. This can be done by issuing "sessions -u <selected session>". This is usefull if we use a command shell payload as an initial stager and then find that this newly exploited system would make the perfect launching pad for further attacks.

Ok, let get started. I'll use a metasploit console version and the system that will be exploited is a Windows XP SP3 machine in my Virtualbox.

Upgrading to BackTrack 5 R2

A while ago, the best linux pentesting distribution, "BackTrack" had released its update that is BackTrack 5 R2.

With a new 3.2.6 kernel, a huge list of new and updated tools and security fixes, BackTrack 5 R2 will provide a more stable and complete penetration testing environment than ever before. For you who doesn't want to reinstall your backtrack to get the R2. You can perform these steps to upgrade your Backtrack 5 R1 to R2. 

Digital Forensic Analysis

After a week of hibernation, its time to move again..  >:)

So, in this post I'll try to perform a simple digital forensic analysis on an image of a floppy disk. You can download it here :

http://www.linuxleo.com/Files/practical.floppy.dd

I use Backtrack OS in this post, because in Linux, there are some basic forensic analysis tools that have been already included.

BASIC LINUX FORENSIC TOOLS

As I told before, linux have been integrated with some basic forensic analysis tools such as :

MP3 File Structure

File structure is something that make up a file. File is the smaller form of a filesystem. A file can't be called "file" when it is not structured. Structure of a file is important to make that file readable because when it is not properly structurized I bet the system won't be able to read it. And I think there's also a standarization of a file structure, so a pdf file named A will have the same structure as the B,C,D or the other pdf files. The file structure of each filetype is also different. An .avi files will have different file structure with a .doc file. 

In this post I'll try to explain about the structure of an mp3 file.   :)

Who don't know MP3? MP3 or to be more specific, MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common digital audio format used widely in the world. When we talk about mp3, it cannot detached from music. I think everyday we always listen to music. And I think you already know, most of the music is encoded with this format.

The Magic Number

Hoho, In this post I'll explain a thing called "Magic Number". Can you guess already what it is? Some kind of number that have a magical spell in it? some kind of magic trick that use numbers as its media? or the others? 

Unfortunately, "magic number" in this post is not a thing related to magic itself literally. This magic number is a thing related about a file format. Originally, this kind of term was used for a specific set of 2-byte identifiers at the beginning of a file, but since any undecoded binary sequence can be regarded as a number, any feature of a file format which uniquely distinguishes it can be used for identification. Identify what? to identify a file format of course.