CAPEC-215: Fuzzing for application mapping

Description

An attacker sends random, malformed, or otherwise unexpected messages to a target application and observes the application's log or error messages returned. The attacker does not initially know how a target will respond to individual messages but by attempting a large number of message variants they may find a variant that trigger's desired behavior. In this attack, the purpose of the fuzzing is to observe the application's log and error messages, although fuzzing a target can also sometimes cause the target to enter an unstable state, causing a crash.

Extended Description

By observing logs and error messages, the attacker can learn details about the configuration of the target application and might be able to cause the target to disclose sensitive information. In applications that return a stack trace along with the error, this can enumerate the chain of methods that led up to the point where the error was encountered. This can not only reveal the names of the methods (some of which may have known weaknesses) but possibly also the location of class files and libraries as well as parameter values. In some cases, the stack trace might even disclose sensitive configuration or user information.

Severity :

Low

Possibility :

High

Type :

Detailed

Relationships with other CAPECs

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

CAPEC-28: Fuzzing Fuzzing CAPEC-54: Query System for Information Query System for Information

Prerequisites

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

The target application must fail to sanitize incoming messages adequately before processing.

Skills required

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

Medium Although fuzzing parameters is not difficult, and often possible with automated fuzzing tools, interpreting the error conditions and modifying the parameters so as to move further in the process of mapping the application requires detailed knowledge of target platform, the languages and packages used as well as software design.

Taxonomy mappings

Mappings to ATT&CK, OWASP and other frameworks.

Resources required

Fuzzing tools, which automatically generate and send message variants, are necessary for this attack. The attacker must have sufficient access to send messages to the target. The attacker must also have the ability to observe the target application's log and/or error messages in order to collect information about the target.

Related CWE

A Related Weakness relationship associates a weakness with this attack pattern. Each association implies a weakness that must exist for a given attack to be successful.

CWE-209: Generation of Error Message Containing Sensitive Information

CWE-532: Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File

Visit http://capec.mitre.org/ for more details.