COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-204

Lifting Sensitive Data Embedded in Cache

An adversary examines a target application's cache, or a browser cache, for sensitive information. Many applications that communicate with remote entities or which perform intensive calculations utilize caches to improve efficiency. However, if the application computes or receives sensitive information and the cache is not appropriately protected, an attacker can browse the cache and retrieve this information. This can result in the disclosure of sensitive information.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Medium

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary examines a target application's cache, or a browser cache, for sensitive information. Many applications that communicate with remote entities or which perform intensive calculations utilize caches to improve efficiency. However, if the application computes or receives sensitive information and the cache is not appropriately protected, an attacker can browse the cache and retrieve this information. This can result in the disclosure of sensitive information.

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

1

Explore

Identify Application Cache

An adversary first identifies an application that utilizes a cache. This could either be a web application storing data in a browser cache, or an application running on a separate machine. The adversary examines the cache to determine file permissions and possible encryption.

Techniques used

  • Use probing tools to look for application cache files on a machine.
  • Use a web application and determine if any sensitive information is stored in browser cache.
2

Experiment

Attempt to Access Cache

Once the cache has been discovered, the adversary attempts to access the cached data. This often requires previous access to a machine hosting the target application.

Techniques used

  • Use priviledge escalation to access cache files that might have strict privileges.
  • If the application cache is encrypted with weak encryption, attempt to understand the encryption technique and break the encryption.
3

Exploit

Lift Sensitive Data from Cache

After gaining access to cached data, an adversary looks for potentially sensitive information and stores it for malicious use. This sensitive data could possibly be used in follow-up attacks related to authentication or authorization.

Techniques used

  • Using a public computer, or gaining access to a victim's computer, examine browser cache to look for sensitive data left over from previous sessions.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The target application must store sensitive information in a cache.
  • The cache must be inadequately protected against attacker access.

Skills required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Resources required

  • The attacker must be able to reach the target application's cache. This may require prior access to the machine on which the target application runs. If the cache is encrypted, the attacker would need sufficient computational resources to crack the encryption. With strong encryption schemes, doing this could be intractable, but weaker encryption schemes could allow an attacker with sufficient resources to read the file.