Detect Unpublicized Web Services

An adversary searches a targeted web site for web services that have not been publicized. This attack can be especially dangerous since unpublished but available services may not have adequate security controls placed upon them given that an administrator may believe they are unreachable.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Low

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

Explore

Find target web site

An adversary finds a target web site that they think may have unpublicized web services

Map the published web site

The adversary will map the published web site either by using an automated tool or by manually accessing well-known debugging or logging pages, or otherwise predictable pages within the site tree

Techniques used

Use Dirbuster to brute force directories and file names to find unpublicized web services
Find a pattern in the naming of documents and extrapolate this pattern to discover additional documents that have been created but are no longer externally linked

Experiment

Try to find weaknesses or information

The adversary will try to find weaknesses in the unpublicized services that the targeted site did not intend to be public

Techniques used

Use Nikto to look for web service vulnerabilities

Exploit

Follow-up attack

Use any information or weaknesses found to carry out a follow-up attack

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

The targeted web site must include unpublished services within its web tree. The nature of these services determines the severity of this attack.

Skills required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Resources required

Spidering tools to explore the target web site are extremely useful in this attack especially when attacking large sites. Some tools might also be able to automatically construct common service queries from known paths.