COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-673

Developer Signing Maliciously Altered Software

Software produced by a reputable developer is clandestinely infected with malicious code and then digitally signed by the unsuspecting developer, where the software has been altered via a compromised software development or build process prior to being signed. The receiver or user of the software has no reason to believe that it is anything but legitimate and proceeds to deploy it to organizational systems. This attack differs from CAPEC-206 , since the developer is inadvertently signing malicious code they believe to be legitimate and which they are unware of any malicious modifications.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

Software produced by a reputable developer is clandestinely infected with malicious code and then digitally signed by the unsuspecting developer, where the software has been altered via a compromised software development or build process prior to being signed. The receiver or user of the software has no reason to believe that it is anything but legitimate and proceeds to deploy it to organizational systems. This attack differs from CAPEC-206 , since the developer is inadvertently signing malicious code they believe to be legitimate and which they are unware of any malicious modifications.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • An adversary would need to have access to a targeted developer’s software development environment, including to their software build processes, where the adversary could ensure code maliciously tainted prior to a build process is included in software packages built.

Skills required

  • High: The adversary must have the skills to infiltrate a developer’s software development/build environment and to implant malicious code in developmental software code, a build server, or a software repository containing dependency code, which would be referenced to be included during the software build process.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Read DataModify Data

Affected scopes: Integrity, Confidentiality

Gain PrivilegesExecute Unauthorized Commands

Affected scopes: Access Control, Authorization

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Have a security concept of operations (CONOPS) for the IDE that includes: Protecting the IDE via logical isolation using firewall and DMZ technologies/architectures; Maintaining strict security administration and configuration management of configuration management tools, developmental software and dependency code repositories, compilers, and system build tools.
2
Employ intrusion detection and malware detection capabilities on IDE systems where feasible.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
An adversary who has infiltrated an organization’s build environment maliciously alters code intended to be included in a product’s software build via software dependency inclusion, part of the software build process. When the software product has been built, the developer electronically signs the finished product using their signing key. The recipient of the software product, an end user/customer, believes the software to reflect the developer’s intent with respect to functionality unaware of the adversary’s malicious intent harbored within.
CAPEC-673: Developer Signing Maliciously Altered Software — DayBreach Saldırı Sözlüğü · DayBreach