COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-510

SaaS User Request Forgery

An adversary, through a previously installed malicious application, performs malicious actions against a third-party Software as a Service (SaaS) application (also known as a cloud based application) by leveraging the persistent and implicit trust placed on a trusted user's session. This attack is executed after a trusted user is authenticated into a cloud service, "piggy-backing" on the authenticated session, and exploiting the fact that the cloud service believes it is only interacting with the trusted user. If successful, the actions embedded in the malicious application will be processed and accepted by the targeted SaaS application and executed at the trusted user's privilege level.

Abstraction

Standard

Typical severity

Medium

Likelihood of attack

High

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary, through a previously installed malicious application, performs malicious actions against a third-party Software as a Service (SaaS) application (also known as a cloud based application) by leveraging the persistent and implicit trust placed on a trusted user's session. This attack is executed after a trusted user is authenticated into a cloud service, "piggy-backing" on the authenticated session, and exploiting the fact that the cloud service believes it is only interacting with the trusted user. If successful, the actions embedded in the malicious application will be processed and accepted by the targeted SaaS application and executed at the trusted user's privilege level.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • An adversary must be able install a purpose built malicious application onto the trusted user's system and convince the user to execute it while authenticated to the SaaS application.

Skills required

  • Medium: This attack pattern often requires the technical ability to modify a malicious software package (e.g. Zeus) to spider a targeted site and a way to trick a user into a malicious software download.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
To limit one's exposure to this type of attack, tunnel communications through a secure proxy service.
2
Detection of this type of attack can be done through heuristic analysis of behavioral anomalies (a la credit card fraud detection) which can be used to identify inhuman behavioral patterns. (e.g., spidering)