Feature #3260: SMTP Base64 Decoding of Message Body - Suricata - Open Information Security Foundation

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Feature #3260

open

SMTP Base64 Decoding of Message Body

Added by Brandon Murphy over 4 years ago. Updated about 4 years ago.

Status:

New

Priority:

Normal

Assignee:

OISF Dev

Target version:

TBD

Effort:

Difficulty:

Label:

Protocol

Description

In attempting to write signatures for the Base64 decoded message body (not an attachment) I find that signatures do not fire as expected.

FWIW, I've observed the same issue for quoted-printable encoding of the message body as well. But intend on opening another issue for that.

I have attached a zip that contains pcap, IDS output, rules, etc.

The pcap has two different tcp sessions, one which includes only a base64 message body (tcp.port 4204), and another that includes the same base64 as an attachment (tcp.port 44228). This was done to validate that base64 decoding of SMTP attachments worked and could be triggered via the file_data keyword as per https://redmine.openinfosecfoundation.org/issues/3190.

The pcap is capturing while using python scripts to read an EML and send it to a python "SMTP Sink". I then used tcprewrite to rewrite the src/dst ips from 127.0.0.1 to something more representative of the traffic I'm attempting to signature.

Please let me know if anything else is required.

Files

base64_message_body_trbl.zip (32.6 KB) base64_message_body_trbl.zip

Brandon Murphy, 10/17/2019 06:42 PM

Related issues 3 (3 open — 0 closed)

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Updated by Andreas Herz over 4 years ago

Assignee set to OISF Dev
Target version set to TBD

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Updated by Victor Julien over 4 years ago

Tracker changed from Bug to Feature

I think this would require new keywords.

When looking at the example rules:

alert smtp any any -> any any (msg:"base64 message body test 1"; content:"|22|Elephants|22|"; sid:1; rev:1; classtype:trojan-activity;)
alert smtp any any -> any any (msg:"base64 message body test 2 includes file_data"; file_data; content:"|22|Elephants|22|"; sid:2; rev:1; classtype:trojan-activity;)

Sid:1 inspects the raw stream. There is no overloading of this to actually replace with some other buffer, by design.
Sid:2 inspects file_data. This does not include the message, just attachements.

So I think we'd need something like a 'smtp.body' sticky buffer for this, that would indeed base64 decode as needed.

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