2 NeoPI is a Python script that uses a variety of statistical methods to detect obfuscated and encrypted content within text/script files. The intended purpose of NeoPI is to aid in the detection of hidden web shell code. The development focus of NeoPI was creating a tool that could be used in conjunction with other established detection methods such as Linux Malware Detect or traditional signature/keyword based searches.
4 NeoPI recursively scans through the file system, from a base directory, and will rank files based on the results of a number of tests. It also presents a “general” score derived from file rankings within the individual tests.
7 NeoPI is platform independent and can be run on any system with Python 2.6 or greater installed installed. The user running the script should have read access to all of the files that will be scanned.
10 NeoPI is platform independent and will run on both Linux and Windows. To start using NeoPI first checkout the code from our github repository
12 git clone ssh://git@github.com:Neohapsis/NeoPI.git
14 The small NeoPI script is now in your local directory. We are going to go though a few examples on Linux and then switch over to Windows.
16 Let’s run neopi.py with the -h flag to see the options.
18 [sbehrens@WebServer2 opt]$ ./neopi.py -h
19 Usage: neopi.py [options] <start directory> <OPTIONAL: filename regex>
22 --version show program's version number and exit
23 -h, --help show this help message and exit
24 -C FILECSV, --csv=FILECSV
26 -a, --all Run all tests [Entropy, Longest Word, Compression
27 -e, --entropy Run entropy Test
28 -l, --longestword Run longest word test
30 -A, --auto Run auto file extension tests
32 Let’s break down the options into greater detail.
34 -C FILECSV, --csv=FILECSV
35 This generates a CSV output file containing the results of the scan.
38 This runs all tests including entropy, longest word, and index of coincidence. In general, we suggest running all tests to build the most comprehensive list of possible web shells.
41 This flag can be set to run only the entropy test.
44 This flag can be set to run only the longest word test.
47 This flag can be set to run only the Index of Coincidence test.
50 This flag runs an auto generated regular expression that contains many common web application file extensions. This list is by no means comprehensive but does include a good ‘best effort’ scan if you are unsure of what web application languages your server is running. The current list of extensions are included below:
52 valid_regex = re.compile('\.php|\.asp|\.aspx|\.sh|\.bash|\.zsh|\.csh|\.tsch|\.pl|\.py|\.txt|\.cgi|\.cfm')
54 Now that we are familiar with the flags and we have downloaded a copy of the script from GIT, let’s go head and run it on a web server we think may be infected with obfuscated web shells.
56 [sbehrens@WebServer2 opt]$ sudo ./neopi.py -C scan1.csv -a -A /var/www/
58 The resulst of the scan we be displayed to console as well as written to 'scan1.csv'. Here is an example of the scan results:
60 [root@WebServer2 opt]# python neopi.py -a -A /var/www/html/
62 [[ Average IC for Search ]]
66 0.0156 /var/www/html/webmedia/shell3.php
67 0.0178 /var/www/html/phpadmin/phpMyAdmin-3.3.8-all-languages/lang/chinese_simplified-utf-8.inc.php
68 0.0184 /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-admin/weevely.php
69 0.0217 /var/www/html/joomla/templates/system/index.php
70 0.0217 /var/www/html/joomla/administrator/templates/system/index.php
71 0.0225 /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php
72 0.0229 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-ch.php
73 0.0239 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-zh.php
74 0.0240 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-zh_cn.php
75 0.0248 /var/www/html/phpadmin/shell2.php
77 [[ Top 10 entropic files ]]
78 6.3978 /var/www/html/phpadmin/phpMyAdmin-3.3.8-all-languages/lang/chinese_simplified-utf-8.inc.php
79 6.0651 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-ch.php
80 6.0061 /var/www/html/webmedia/shell3.php
81 5.9870 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-zh.php
82 5.9797 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-zh_cn.php
83 5.9245 /var/www/html/phpadmin/shell2.php
84 5.8895 /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php
85 5.8580 /var/www/html/phpadmin/phpMyAdmin-3.3.8-all-languages/lang/japanese-utf-8.inc.php
86 5.8400 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-ja.php
87 5.7602 /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-admin/weevely.php
89 [[ Top 10 longest word files ]]
90 111571 /var/www/html/webmedia/shell3.php
91 2510 /var/www/html/webmedia/htdocs/templates/main.tpl.php
92 1312 /var/www/html/joomla/shell.php
93 728 /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php
94 536 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Libs/QuickForm/3.2.11/HTML/QuickForm/Rule/Email.php
95 522 /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-includes/functions.php
96 516 /var/www/html/phpadmin/phpMyAdmin-3.3.8-all-languages/libraries/tcpdf/tcpdf.php
97 516 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Libs/PHPExcel/lib/PHPExcel/Shared/PDF/tcpdf.php
98 516 /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Libs/TCPDF/tcpdf4/tcpdf.php
99 516 /var/www/html/joomla/libraries/tcpdf/tcpdf.php
101 [[ Highest Rank Files Based on test results ]]
102 83% /var/www/html/webmedia/shell3.php
103 56% /var/www/html/phpadmin/phpMyAdmin-3.3.8-all-languages/lang/chinese_simplified-utf-8.inc.php
104 43% /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-admin/js/revisions-js.php
105 36% /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-ch.php
106 26% /var/www/html/webmedia/htdocs/templates/main.tpl.php
107 26% /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-zh.php
108 23% /var/www/html/wordpress/wordpress/wp-admin/weevely.php
109 23% /var/www/html/joomla/shell.php
110 20% /var/www/html/joomla/templates/system/index.php
111 20% /var/www/html/epesiBIM/epesi-1.1.3-rev7318/modules/Base/Mail/language/phpmailer.lang-zh_cn.php
113 We highly recommend that as a baseline, any file that is displayed in the Highest Rank Files list be investigated at a minimum. We also recommend investigating any files that show up in any of the tests listed above, as some methods are more effective at detecting certain shells than others.
116 The tool is cross compatible with windows as well. In the example below we use a regular expressing to just search for php and text files.
118 python neopi.py -a c:\temp\phpbb "php|txt"
121 animal_shell_encoder.php and animal_shell_poc.php are two Proof-of-Concept-type examples scripts to implement an encoding that "should" evade many of the statistical tests NeoPI performs. They are poorly commented and the decoder large such that they are impractical.