CAPEC-517: Documentation Alteration to Circumvent Dial-down
Attack Pattern ID: 517
Abstraction: Detailed
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Description
An attacker with access to a manufacturer's documentation, which include descriptions of advanced technology and/or specific components' criticality, alters the documents to circumvent dial-down functionality requirements. This alteration would change the interpretation of implementation and manufacturing techniques, allowing for advanced technologies to remain in place even though these technologies might be restricted to certain customers, such as nations on the terrorist watch list, giving the attacker on the receiving end of a shipped product access to an advanced technology that might otherwise be restricted.
Likelihood Of Attack
Low
Typical Severity
High
Relationships
This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern. These relationships are defined as ChildOf and ParentOf, and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as CanFollow, PeerOf, and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar attack patterns that the user may want to explore.
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
Standard Attack Pattern - A standard level attack pattern in CAPEC is focused on a specific methodology or technique used in an attack. It is often seen as a singular piece of a fully executed attack. A standard attack pattern is meant to provide sufficient details to understand the specific technique and how it attempts to accomplish a desired goal. A standard level attack pattern is a specific type of a more abstract meta level attack pattern.
Advanced knowledge of internal software and hardware components within manufacturer's development environment.
Access to the manufacturer's documentation.
Skills Required
[Level: High]
Ability to read, interpret, and subsequently alter manufacturer's documentation to prevent dial-down capabilities.
[Level: High]
Ability to stealthly gain access via remote compromise or physical access to the manufacturer's documentation.
Mitigations
Digitize documents and cryptographically sign them to verify authenticity.
Password protect documents and make them read-only for unauthorized users.
Avoid emailing important documents and configurations.
Ensure deleted files are actually deleted.
Maintain backups of the document for recovery and verification.
Example Instances
A product for manufacture exists that contains advanced cryptographic capabilities, including algorithms that are restricted from being shipped to some nations. An attacker from one of the restricted nations alters the documentation to ensure that when the product is manufactured for shipment to a restricted nation, the software compilation steps that normally would prevent the advanced cryptographic capabilities from being included are actually included. When the product is shipped to the attacker's home country, the attacker is able to retrieve and/or use the advanced cryptographic capabilities.
Related Weaknesses
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. If multiple weaknesses are associated with the attack pattern, then any of the weaknesses (but not necessarily all) may be present for the attack to be successful. Each related weakness is identified by a CWE identifier.
Supply Chain: CWE does not currently cover Supply Chain in the way it is presented by CAPEC. Therefore, no mapping between the two corpuses can be made at this time.
Description
This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern. These relationships are defined as ChildOf and ParentOf, and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as CanFollow, PeerOf, and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar attack patterns that the user may want to explore.
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