COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-5

Blue Boxing

This type of attack against older telephone switches and trunks has been around for decades. A tone is sent by an adversary to impersonate a supervisor signal which has the effect of rerouting or usurping command of the line. While the US infrastructure proper may not contain widespread vulnerabilities to this type of attack, many companies are connected globally through call centers and business process outsourcing. These international systems may be operated in countries which have not upgraded Telco infrastructure and so are vulnerable to Blue boxing. Blue boxing is a result of failure on the part of the system to enforce strong authorization for administrative functions. While the infrastructure is different than standard current applications like web applications, there are historical lessons to be learned to upgrade the access control for administrative functions. This attack pattern is included in CAPEC for historical purposes.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Very High

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

This type of attack against older telephone switches and trunks has been around for decades. A tone is sent by an adversary to impersonate a supervisor signal which has the effect of rerouting or usurping command of the line. While the US infrastructure proper may not contain widespread vulnerabilities to this type of attack, many companies are connected globally through call centers and business process outsourcing. These international systems may be operated in countries which have not upgraded Telco infrastructure and so are vulnerable to Blue boxing. Blue boxing is a result of failure on the part of the system to enforce strong authorization for administrative functions. While the infrastructure is different than standard current applications like web applications, there are historical lessons to be learned to upgrade the access control for administrative functions. This attack pattern is included in CAPEC for historical purposes.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • System must use weak authentication mechanisms for administrative functions.

Skills required

  • Low: Given a vulnerable phone system, the attackers' technical vector relies on attacks that are well documented in cracker 'zines and have been around for decades.

Resources required

  • CCITT-5 or other vulnerable lines, with the ability to send tones such as combined 2,400 Hz and 2,600 Hz tones to the switch

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Resource Consumption

Affected scopes: Availability

Gain Privileges

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Access Control, Authorization

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Implementation: Upgrade phone lines. Note this may be prohibitively expensive
2
Use strong access control such as two factor access control for administrative access to the switch

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
An adversary identifies a vulnerable CCITT-5 phone line, and sends a combination tone to the switch in order to request administrative access. Based on tone and timing parameters the request is verified for access to the switch. Once the adversary has gained control of the switch launching calls, routing calls, and a whole host of opportunities are available.
CAPEC-5: Blue Boxing — DayBreach Saldırı Sözlüğü · DayBreach