COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-173

Action Spoofing

An adversary is able to disguise one action for another and therefore trick a user into initiating one type of action when they intend to initiate a different action. For example, a user might be led to believe that clicking a button will submit a query, but in fact it downloads software. Adversaries may perform this attack through social means, such as by simply convincing a victim to perform the action or relying on a user's natural inclination to do so, or through technical means, such as a clickjacking attack where a user sees one interface but is actually interacting with a second, invisible, interface.

Abstraction

Meta

Typical severity

Very High

Likelihood of attack

High

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary is able to disguise one action for another and therefore trick a user into initiating one type of action when they intend to initiate a different action. For example, a user might be led to believe that clicking a button will submit a query, but in fact it downloads software. Adversaries may perform this attack through social means, such as by simply convincing a victim to perform the action or relying on a user's natural inclination to do so, or through technical means, such as a clickjacking attack where a user sees one interface but is actually interacting with a second, invisible, interface.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The adversary must convince the victim into performing the decoy action.
  • The adversary must have the means to control a user's interface to present them with a decoy action as well as the actual malicious action. Simple versions of this attack can be performed using web pages requiring only that the adversary be able to host (or control) content that the user visits.

Skills required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Other

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Avoid interacting with suspicious sites or clicking suspicious links.
2
An organization should provide regular, robust cybersecurity training to its employees.