COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-611

BitSquatting

An adversary registers a domain name one bit different than a trusted domain. A BitSquatting attack leverages random errors in memory to direct Internet traffic to adversary-controlled destinations. BitSquatting requires no exploitation or complicated reverse engineering, and is operating system and architecture agnostic. Experimental observations show that BitSquatting popular websites could redirect non-trivial amounts of Internet traffic to a malicious entity.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Medium

Likelihood of attack

Low

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary registers a domain name one bit different than a trusted domain. A BitSquatting attack leverages random errors in memory to direct Internet traffic to adversary-controlled destinations. BitSquatting requires no exploitation or complicated reverse engineering, and is operating system and architecture agnostic. Experimental observations show that BitSquatting popular websites could redirect non-trivial amounts of Internet traffic to a malicious entity.

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

1

Explore

Determine target website

The adversary first determines which website to impersonate, generally one that is trusted and receives a consistent amount of traffic.

Techniques used

  • Research popular or high traffic websites.
2

Experiment

Impersonate trusted domain

In order to impersonate the trusted domain, the adversary needs to register the BitSquatted URL.

Techniques used

  • Register the BitSquatted domain.
3

Exploit

Wait for a user to visit the domain

Finally, the adversary simply waits for a user to be unintentionally directed to the BitSquatted domain.

Techniques used

  • Simply wait for an error in memory to occur, redirecting the user to the malicious domain.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • An adversary requires knowledge of popular or high traffic domains, that could be used to deceive potential targets.

Skills required

  • Low: Adversaries must be able to register DNS hostnames/URL’s.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Other

Affected scopes: Other

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Authenticate all servers and perform redundant checks when using DNS hostnames.
2
When possible, use error-correcting (ECC) memory in local devices as non-ECC memory is significantly more vulnerable to faults.