COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-634

Probe Audio and Video Peripherals

The adversary exploits the target system's audio and video functionalities through malware or scheduled tasks. The goal is to capture sensitive information about the target for financial, personal, political, or other gains which is accomplished by collecting communication data between two parties via the use of peripheral devices (e.g. microphones and webcams) or applications with audio and video capabilities (e.g. Skype) on a system.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Low

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

The adversary exploits the target system's audio and video functionalities through malware or scheduled tasks. The goal is to capture sensitive information about the target for financial, personal, political, or other gains which is accomplished by collecting communication data between two parties via the use of peripheral devices (e.g. microphones and webcams) or applications with audio and video capabilities (e.g. Skype) on a system.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • Knowledge of the target device's or application’s vulnerabilities that can be capitalized on with malicious code. The adversary must be able to place the malicious code on the target device.

Skills required

  • High: To deploy a hidden process or malware on the system to automatically collect audio and video data.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Read Data

Affected scopes: Confidentiality

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Prevent unknown code from executing on a system through the use of an allowlist policy.
2
Patch installed applications as soon as new updates become available.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
An adversary can capture audio and video, and transmit the recordings to a C2 server or a similar capability.
Example instance 2Detail
An adversary can capture and record from audio peripherals in a vehicle via a Car Whisperer attack. If an adversary is within close proximity to a vehicle with Bluetooth capabilities, they may attempt to connect to the hands-free system when it is in pairing mode. With successful authentication, if an authentication system is present at all, an adversary may be able to play music/voice recordings, as well begin a recording and capture conversations happening inside the vehicle. Successful authentication relies on the pairing security key being set to a default value, or by brute force (which may be less practical in an outside environment) Depending on the sensitivity of the information being discussed, this scenario can be extremely compromising.
Example instance 3Detail
An adversary may also use a technique called Bluebugging, which is similar to Bluesnarfing but requires the adversary to be between 10-15 meters of the target device. Bluebugging creates a backdoor for an attacker to listen/record phone calls, forward calls, send SMS and retrieve the phonebook.