Disable a number of "Rsiky features" exposed by operating systems (Microsoft Windows)

Hardentools is a collection of simple utilities designed to disable a number of "features" exposed by operating systems (Microsoft Windows, for now), and primary consumer applications. These features, commonly thought for Enterprise customers, are generally useless to regular users and rather pose as dangers as they are very commonly abused by attackers to execute malicious code on a victim's computer. The intent of this tool is to simply reduce the attack surface by disabling the low-hanging fruit. Hardentools is intended for individuals at risk, who might want an extra level of security at the price of some usability. It is not intended for corporate environments.

 WARNING: This is just an experiment, it is not meant for public distribution yet. Also, this tool disables a number of features, including of Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, and Windows, that might cause malfunctions to certain applications. Use this at your own risk.

How to use it
Once you double-click on the icon, depending on your Windows security settings, you should be prompted with an User Access Control dialog asking you confirmation to allow Hardentools to run. Click "Yes".

Then, you will see the main Hardentools window. It's very simple, you just click on the "Harden" button, and the tool will make the changes to your Windows configuration to disable a set of features that are risky. Once completed, you will be asked to restart your computer for all the changes to have full effect.

In case you wish to restore the default settings and revert the changes Hardentools made (for example, if you need to use cmd.exe), you can simply re-run the tool and instead of an "Harden" button you will be prompted with a "Restore" button. Similarly, click it and wait for the modifications to be reverted.
In the future, we will create the ability to select or deselect certain modifications Hardentools is configured to make.
Please note: the modifications made by Hardentools are exclusively contextual to the Windows user account used to run the tool from. In case you want Hardentools to change settings for other Windows users as well, you will have to run it from each one of them logged in.

What this tool does NOT
  • It does NOT prevent software from being exploited.
  • It does NOT prevent the abuse of every available risky feature.
  • It is NOT an Antivirus. It does not protect your computer. It doesn't identify, block, or remove any malware.
  • It does NOT prevent the changes it implements from being reverted. If malicious code runs on the system and it is able to restore them, the premise of the tool is defeated, isn't it?

Disabled Features

Generic Windows Features
  •  Disable Windows Script Host. Windows Script Host allows the execution of VBScript and Javascript files on Windows operating systems. This is very commonly used by regular malware (such as ransomware) as well as targeted malware.
  •  Disabling AutoRun and AutoPlay. Disables AutoRun / AutoPlay for all devices. For example, this should prevent applicatons from automatically executing when you plug a USB stick into your computer.
  •  Disables powershell.exe, powershell_ise.exe and cmd.exe execution via Windows Explorer. You will not be able to use the terminal and it should prevent the use of PowerShell by malicious code trying to infect the system.
  •  Sets User Account Control (UAC) to always ask for permission (even on configuration changes only) and to use "secure desktop".
  •  Disable file extensions mainly used for malicious purposes. Disables the ".hta", ".js", ".JSE", ".WSH", ".WSF", ".scr", ".vbs" and ".pif" file extensions for the current user (and for system wide defaults, which is only relevant for newly created users).

Microsoft Office
  •  Disable Macros. Macros are at times used by Microsoft Office users to script and automate certain activities, especially calculations with Microsoft Excel. However, macros are currently a security plague, and they are widely used as a vehicle for compromise. With Hardentools, macros are disabled and the "Enable this Content" notification is disabled too, to prevent users from being tricked.
  •  Disable OLE object execution. Microsoft Office applications are able to embed so called "OLE objects" and execute them, at times also automatically (for example through PowerPoint animations). Windows executables, such as spyware, can also be embedded and executed as an object. This is also a security disaster which we observed used time and time again, particularly in attacks against activists in repressed regions. Hardentools entirely disables this functionality.
  •  Disabling ActiveX. Disables ActiveX Controls for all Office applications.

Acrobat Reader
  •  Disable JavaScript in PDF documents. Acrobat Reader allows to execute JavaScript code from within PDF documents. This is widely abused for exploitation and malicious activity.
  •  Disable execution of objects embedded in PDF documents. Acrobat Reader also allows to execute embedded objects by opening them. This would normally raise a security alert, but given that legitimate uses of this are rare and limited, Hardentools disables this.

Authors

This tools is developed by Claudio Guarnieri, Mariano Graziano and Florian Probst.


Download Hardentools

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

USB forensic : Find the history of every connected USB device on your computer

Image
Sometime we need to know what USB devices were connected to our computer in our absence.These information could be very useful for forensic examiner or in general case also where we just want to know what USB devices were used . How do this works We all know about registry on windows, a registry is a database in windows which stores settings of the operating system, hardware devices, software programs and user preferences settings. Whenever we insert a USB drive in a computers a registry key with name "USBSTOR" is created this registry key store information about that USB device and whatever info the OS need to know can be found in this registry key.  Finding the all attached USB history To find the usb  history of your device just do the following step below  STEP 1  Go to run and type "regedit".  STEP 2: In the registry go to  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR and there you will find a registry key with na
Read more

Crawling pastebin to find specific pastedump

Image
In this post we will crawl into pastebin.com to find specific pastebin dump. For example if we want to find paste for specific keyword like "password" we can get all the paste containing that keyword. Preparing the Attack Usually some sites don't allow web crawling and by doing so you may get banned from accessing that site, which will also make this method vain.  So before doing this i recommend you to use THIS tool to anonymize all your traffic so that if we get banned we can switch our IP address immediately.  Start the Attack STEP 1 Clone into this URL by typing https://github.com/kahunalu/pwnbin.git STEP 2 Now type python pwnbin.py -k pass -n 10 -m 10 here "-k" is the keyword you want to search for "-n" is the number of paste you want to crawl and "-m" number of keywords matches you want.  As we can see above we have found a match and it's now saved to log.txt file so it's time to see the dump co
Read more

Hack WinRAR password by using Brute force attack

Image
Winrar have option to password protect your files in it.Some times we got password protected rar files or we forget our password so we go online to search to crack password of these type of rar files.Some website tell about some program who promises to decrypt the password, But unluckily there are lots of spam ,advertisement, on internet who ask you to complete the survey to download the program that can unlock the password and absolutely that's a spam,some websites also provide direct link downloadable  program to crack rar password but when we download them instead of doing that, they install lots of unwanted sponsors software and make your PC slower.But now we have a easiest way to get the password of rar file by using brute force attack. No spam,no survey,no unwanted software and with proof.So lets start the hack and follow some simple  step by step guide given below.  1 > For example i am going to set password in rar file 2> Now when ever i am try
Read more

Fileless malware Analysis with Cuckoo sandbox

Image
What is cuckoo Sandbox Cuckoo is a dynamic malware analysis sandbox which is open source and completely free. We can submit any malicious binary file and cuckoo will provide a detailed report of the malicious file, including the behaviour of that file during execution.   What is Fileless Malware A fileless malware is a favorite technique for malware authors, what this type of malware does, it doesn’t write anything on the disk to bypass mostly string base detection. The malware executes an obfuscated command usually PowerShell and during run time antivirus could not detect the strings which are being executed and after injecting it in memory the command get deobfuscated. Cuckoo Interface and sample analysis To run cuckoo just type cuckoo from your terminal, this will start cuckoo service. Now to get the web interface type cuckoo run webserver this will start the cuckoo web interface on its defined URL and port address as shown below.
Read more

Web application penetration testing: Tools and Techniques for web security auditing

Image
Every pentester has it's own tool and technique for web app security auditing, Some time it depend on the type of website  we are pentesting. We are gonna see some common tool and technique that can help us to audit our web application security. Detecting web application firewall and other services You can start with by detecting is there any web application firewall in use? Later we can see if there's any way to bypass it.  Recommend tool :  fofa.so It is a cyberspace search engine launched by White Hat. It can help researchers or enterprises quickly match network assets by performing cyberspace mapping, for example, analyzing the scope of vulnerability.  shodan.io It is most poplar search engine among pentester for finding various online vulnerable IoT devices, online open ports f rom various web servers. wafw00f   This tool allow you to detect and identify what Web Application is in use that is protecting the website.  Bypassing Cloudfl
Read more