COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-517

Documentation Alteration to Circumvent Dial-down

An attacker with access to a manufacturer's documentation, which include descriptions of advanced technology and/or specific components' criticality, alters the documents to circumvent dial-down functionality requirements. This alteration would change the interpretation of implementation and manufacturing techniques, allowing for advanced technologies to remain in place even though these technologies might be restricted to certain customers, such as nations on the terrorist watch list, giving the attacker on the receiving end of a shipped product access to an advanced technology that might otherwise be restricted.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Low

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An attacker with access to a manufacturer's documentation, which include descriptions of advanced technology and/or specific components' criticality, alters the documents to circumvent dial-down functionality requirements. This alteration would change the interpretation of implementation and manufacturing techniques, allowing for advanced technologies to remain in place even though these technologies might be restricted to certain customers, such as nations on the terrorist watch list, giving the attacker on the receiving end of a shipped product access to an advanced technology that might otherwise be restricted.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • Advanced knowledge of internal software and hardware components within manufacturer's development environment.
  • Access to the manufacturer's documentation.

Skills required

  • High: Ability to read, interpret, and subsequently alter manufacturer's documentation to prevent dial-down capabilities.
  • High: Ability to stealthly gain access via remote compromise or physical access to the manufacturer's documentation.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Digitize documents and cryptographically sign them to verify authenticity.
2
Password protect documents and make them read-only for unauthorized users.
3
Avoid emailing important documents and configurations.
4
Ensure deleted files are actually deleted.
5
Maintain backups of the document for recovery and verification.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
A product for manufacture exists that contains advanced cryptographic capabilities, including algorithms that are restricted from being shipped to some nations. An attacker from one of the restricted nations alters the documentation to ensure that when the product is manufactured for shipment to a restricted nation, the software compilation steps that normally would prevent the advanced cryptographic capabilities from being included are actually included. When the product is shipped to the attacker's home country, the attacker is able to retrieve and/or use the advanced cryptographic capabilities.