CAPEC-272: Protocol Manipulation

Description
An adversary subverts a communications protocol to perform an attack. This type of attack can allow an adversary to impersonate others, discover sensitive information, control the outcome of a session, or perform other attacks. This type of attack targets invalid assumptions that may be inherent in implementers of the protocol, incorrect implementations of the protocol, or vulnerabilities in the protocol itself.
Extended Description

Many client applications use specific query templates when interacting with a server and often automatically fill in specific fields or attributes. If the server does not verify that the query matches one of the expected templates, an adversary who is allowed to send normal queries could modify their query to try to return additional information. The adversary may not know the names of fields to request or how other modifications will affect the server response, but by attempting multiple plausible variants, they might eventually trigger a server response that divulges sensitive information. Other possible outcomes include server crashes and resource consumption if the unexpected queries cause the server to enter an unstable state or perform excessive computation.

Severity :

Medium

Possibility :

Type :

Meta
Prerequisites

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

  • The protocol or implementations thereof must contain bugs that an adversary can exploit.
Skills required

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

Taxonomy mappings

Mappings to ATT&CK, OWASP and other frameworks.

Resources required

In some variants of this attack the adversary must be able to intercept communications using the protocol. This means they need to be able to receive the communications from one participant and prevent the other participant from receiving these communications.

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.

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