COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-121

Exploit Non-Production Interfaces

An adversary exploits a sample, demonstration, test, or debug interface that is unintentionally enabled on a production system, with the goal of gleaning information or leveraging functionality that would otherwise be unavailable.

Abstraction

Standard

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Low

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary exploits a sample, demonstration, test, or debug interface that is unintentionally enabled on a production system, with the goal of gleaning information or leveraging functionality that would otherwise be unavailable.

Extended description

Non-production interfaces are insecure by default and should not be resident on production systems, since they may reveal sensitive information or functionality that should not be known to end-users. However, such interfaces may be unintentionally left enabled on a production system due to configuration errors, supply chain mismanagement, or other pre-deployment activities. Ultimately, failure to properly disable non-production interfaces, in a production environment, may expose a great deal of diagnostic information or functionality to an adversary, which can be utilized to further refine their attack. Moreover, many non-production interfaces do not have adequate security controls or may not have undergone rigorous testing since they were not intended for use in production environments. As such, they may contain many flaws and vulnerabilities that could allow an adversary to severely disrupt a target.

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

1

Explore

Determine Vulnerable Interface

An adversary explores a target system for sample or test interfaces that have not been disabled by a system administrator and which may be exploitable by the adversary.

Techniques used

  • If needed, the adversary explores an organization's network to determine if any specific systems of interest exist.
2

Exploit

Leverage Test Interface to Execute Attacks

Once an adversary has discovered a system with a non-production interface, the interface is leveraged to exploit the system and/or conduct various attacks.

Techniques used

  • The adversary can leverage the sample or test interface to conduct several types of attacks such as Adversary-in-the-Middle attacks ( CAPEC-94 ), keylogging, Cross Site Scripting (XSS), hardware manipulation attacks, and more.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The target must have configured non-production interfaces and failed to secure or remove them when brought into a production environment.

Skills required

  • High: Exploiting non-production interfaces requires significant skill and knowledge about the potential non-production interfaces left enabled in production.

Resources required

  • For some interfaces, the adversary will need that appropriate client application or hardware that interfaces with the interface. Other non-production interfaces can be executed using simple tools, such as web browsers or console windows. In some cases, an adversary may need to be able to authenticate to the target before it can access the vulnerable interface.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Gain PrivilegesBypass Protection Mechanism

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Access Control, Authentication

Read DataExecute Unauthorized Commands

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Access Control, Authorization

Modify DataAlter Execution Logic

Affected scopes: Access Control, Integrity

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Ensure that production systems do not contain non-production interfaces and that these interfaces are only used in development environments.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
Some software applications include application programming interfaces (APIs) that are intended to allow an administrator to test and refine their domain. These APIs are typically disabled once a system enters a production environment, but may be left in an insecure state due to a configuration error or mismanagement.
Example instance 2Detail
Many hardware systems leverage bits typically reserved for future functionality for testing and debugging purposes. If these reserved bits remain enabled in a production environment, it could allow an adversary to induce unwanted/unsupported behavior in the hardware.