User caught it: I shipped the theZoo path without running it
end-to-end. A real fetch on the Pi exposed two bugs:
1. Family-name matcher was substring-strict. "Cryptolocker-class"
wouldn't match the dir "CryptoLocker_22Jan2014" because "-class"
isn't in the dir name. Now expands to a sequence of tokens
(full, head-of-dash, head-of-dot, head-of-underscore) and tries
each. First match wins.
2. Extraction picker was "largest non-text" — a bad heuristic for
theZoo, where each Linux.* zip often contains MULTIPLE binaries
for different platforms (Linux i386, x86-64, ARM, FreeBSD, sometimes
even Windows PE). The largest is rarely the i386 Linux ELF that
would actually run on Metasploitable2. Now sniffs ELF magic bytes
in stdlib and tiers:
1. Linux i386 ELF (largest first)
2. any other ELF (best-effort, may not execute)
3. largest non-text (Wine fallback)
Verified end-to-end on the Pi against a real theZoo clone (~500 MB,
263 family dirs, 2026-05-01 fresh pull):
linux-encoder-ransomware → ELF 32-bit Intel i386 SYSV (278 KB)
linux-wirenet-rat → ELF 32-bit Intel i386 SYSV (64 KB)
linux-rex-ransomware → ELF 32-bit Intel i386 SYSV Go (7.6 MB)
linux-neurevt-bot → ELF 32-bit Intel i386 SYSV (3.0 MB)
linux-earthkrahang-apt → ELF 32-bit Intel i386 GNU/Linux (5.8 MB)
5/5 picks are runnable Linux i386 ELFs. Manifest rewrites in place
add source/sha256/url; meta.sample.kind goes to "real" automatically.
Manifest rewritten:
- Old families (XMRig, Mirai, Cryptolocker-class, Dridex, Kovter,
Reverse-Shell) → mostly absent from theZoo's Linux catalog or
matched the wrong arch.
- New families chosen against a verified theZoo presence list:
Linux.Encoder, Linux.Wirenet, Ransomware.Rex, Neurevt,
EarthKrahang.
- XMRig + Kovter remain as mimic-only fallbacks (theZoo lacks a
runnable Linux i386 binary for these; orchestrator falls back
to the mimic profile).
Tests added (tests/test_auto_fetch_samples.py): 13 cases covering
ELF magic detection (i386 accepted, FreeBSD/x86-64/ARM/PE32/text
all rejected), family-token expansion (the "-class" suffix bug),
extraction picker (prefers Linux i386 over larger non-Linux ELFs),
manifest in-place rewrite preserves mode + skips entries that
already have sha256.
What's still NOT verified end-to-end (requires a lab host with
KVM x86):
- Metasploitable2 boot under QEMU
- vsftpd_234_backdoor exploit fire via msfrpcd
- chunked binary upload through a real shell session
- real binary executing inside a Metasploitable2 guest
The Pi is ARM64 — can't run Metasploitable2. install-tier-3-4.sh's
verify step (run_tier3_demo.py) covers all four on a real lab host;
deploy verifies on first run there.
171/171 tests pass.
