Spoofing File Extensions — Ethical Hacking
File extension spoofing is a handy trick when creating trojans. In this blog, I will be spoofing the ‘.exe’ extension to the ‘.jpg’ extension. But this method can be extended to spoof any extension type.
I have a file named trojan.exe
whose name I will change to sports_complexe.jpg
by the end of this blog.
I will use a right-to-left-override
character to spoof the extension .exe
and replace it with .jpg
. Let me tell you how.
Current file name -> trojan.exe
Desired extension -> .jpg
To remove the .exe
from extension, I will use a right-to-left-override
character to make the file name read from right to left after the right-to-left-override
is placed.
Right-to-left of .jpg
would be gpj.
To get the right-to-left-override character open the characters
application in Ubuntu and search for the right-to-left-override character. You can follow the steps shown in the pictures below.
Rename trojan.exe
to trojangpj.exe
. Paste the right-to-left-override character at the 7th position after trojan. All the characters after the right-to-left-override
character will be flipped i.e. read right to left.
The filename now looks like trojanexe.jpg
To make the executable look more realistic, since the image icon contained in the file is of a sports complex I will replace trojan
in the name with sports_compl
so that the file name reads sports_complexe.jpg
And tada! , the file extension spoofing was successful. Some recent browsers remove the right-to-left-override before downloading. So it is a good idea to zip the file and send it over.
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