COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-278

Web Services Protocol Manipulation

An adversary manipulates a web service related protocol to cause a web application or service to react differently than intended. This can either be performed through the manipulation of call parameters to include unexpected values, or by changing the called function to one that should normally be restricted or limited. By leveraging this pattern of attack, the adversary is able to gain access to data or resources normally restricted, or to cause the application or service to crash.

Abstraction

Standard

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary manipulates a web service related protocol to cause a web application or service to react differently than intended. This can either be performed through the manipulation of call parameters to include unexpected values, or by changing the called function to one that should normally be restricted or limited. By leveraging this pattern of attack, the adversary is able to gain access to data or resources normally restricted, or to cause the application or service to crash.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The targeted application or service must rely on web service protocols in such a way that malicious manipulation of them can alter functionality.

Skills required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Resources required

  • The attacker must be able to manipulate the communications to the targeted application or service.

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Design: Range, size and value and consistency verification for any arguments supplied to applications and services from external sources and devise appropriate error response.
2
Design: Ensure that function calls that should not be called by an unprivileged user are not accessible to them.