COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-697

DHCP Spoofing

An adversary masquerades as a legitimate Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server by spoofing DHCP traffic, with the goal of redirecting network traffic or denying service to DHCP.

Abstraction

Standard

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Low

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary masquerades as a legitimate Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server by spoofing DHCP traffic, with the goal of redirecting network traffic or denying service to DHCP.

Extended description

DHCP is broadcast to the entire Local Area Network (LAN) and does not have any form of authentication by default. Therefore, it is susceptible to spoofing. An adversary with access to the target LAN can receive DHCP messages; obtaining the topology information required to potentially manipulate other hosts' network configurations. To improve the likelihood of the DHCP request being serviced by the Rogue server, an adversary can first starve the DHCP pool.

Execution flow

How does the attack proceed, step by step?

1

Explore

Determine Exsisting DHCP lease

An adversary observes network traffic and waits for an existing DHCP lease to expire on a target machine in the LAN.

Techniques used

  • Adversary observes LAN traffic for DHCP solicitations
2

Experiment

Capture the DHCP DISCOVER message

The adversary captures "DISCOVER" messages and crafts "OFFER" responses for the identified target MAC address. The success of this attack centers on the capturing of and responding to these "DISCOVER" messages.

Techniques used

  • Adversary captures and responds to DHCP "DISCOVER" messages tailored to the target subnet.
3

Exploit

Compromise Network Access and Collect Network Activity

An adversary successfully acts as a rogue DHCP server by redirecting legitimate DHCP requests to itself.

Techniques used

  • Adversary sends repeated DHCP "REQUEST" messages to quickly lease all the addresses within network's DHCP pool and forcing new DHCP requests to be handled by the rogue DHCP server.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The adversary must have access to a machine within the target LAN which can send DHCP offers to the target.

Skills required

  • Medium: The adversary must identify potential targets for DHCP Spoofing and craft network configurations to obtain the desired results.

Resources required

  • The adversary requires access to a machine within the target LAN on a network which does not secure its DHCP traffic through MAC-Forced Forwarding, port security, etc.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Read Data

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Access Control

Modify DataExecute Unauthorized Commands

Affected scopes: Integrity, Access Control

Resource Consumption

Affected scopes: Availability

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Design: MAC-Forced Forwarding
2
Implementation: Port Security and DHCP snooping
3
Implementation: Network-based Intrusion Detection Systems

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
In early 2019, Microsoft patched a critical vulnerability ( CVE-2019-0547) in the Windows DHCP client which allowed remote code execution via crafted DHCP OFFER packets. [ REF-739 ]
CAPEC-697: DHCP Spoofing — DayBreach Saldırı Sözlüğü · DayBreach