COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-519

Documentation Alteration to Cause Errors in System Design

An attacker with access to a manufacturer's documentation containing requirements allocation and software design processes maliciously alters the documentation in order to cause errors in system design. This allows the attacker to take advantage of a weakness in a deployed system of the manufacturer for malicious purposes.

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 containing requirements allocation and software design processes maliciously alters the documentation in order to cause errors in system design. This allows the attacker to take advantage of a weakness in a deployed system of the manufacturer for malicious purposes.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • Advanced knowledge of software capabilities of a manufacturer's product.
  • Access to the manufacturer's documentation.

Skills required

  • High: Ability to read, interpret, and subsequently alter manufacturer's documentation to cause errors in system design.
  • 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 multiple instances of the document across different privileged users for recovery and verification.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
During operation, a firewall will restart various subsystems to reload and implement new rules as added by the user. An attacker alters the software design dependencies in the manufacturer's documentation so that under certain predictable conditions the reload will fail to load in rules resulting in a "fail open" state. Once deployed at a victim site, this will allow the attacker to bypass the victim's firewall.