Web Logs Tampering attacks involve an attacker injecting, deleting or otherwise tampering with the contents of web logs typically for the purposes of masking other malicious behavior. Additionally, writing malicious data to log files may target jobs, filters, reports, and other agents that process the logs in an asynchronous attack pattern. This pattern of attack is similar to "Log Injection-Tampering-Forging" except that in this case, the attack is targeting the logs of the web server and not the application.
Likelihood Of Attack
Medium
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.
Determine Application Web Server Log File Format: The attacker observes the system and looks for indicators of which logging utility is being used by the web server.
Techniques
Determine logging utility being used by application web server (e.g. log4j), only possible if the application is known by the attacker or if the application returns error messages with logging utility information.
Experiment
Determine Injectable Content: The attacker launches various logged actions with malicious data to determine what sort of log injection is possible.
Techniques
Attacker triggers logged actions with maliciously crafted data as inputs, parameters, arguments, etc.
Exploit
Manipulate Log Files: The attacker alters the log contents either directly through manipulation or forging or indirectly through injection of specially crafted request that the web server will receive and write into the logs. This type of attack typically follows another attack and is used to try to cover the traces of the previous attack.
Techniques
Indirectly through injection, use carriage return and/or line feed characters to start a new line in the log file, and then, add a fake entry.
For example: The HTTP request for "/index.html%0A%0DIP_ADDRESS- - DATE_FORMAT] "GET /forged-path HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" USER_AGENT" may add the log line into Apache "access_log" (for example). Different applications may require different encodings of the carriage return and line feed characters.
Directly through log file or database manipulation, use carriage return and/or line feed characters to start a new line in the log file, and then, add a fake entry.
For example: The HTTP request for "/index.html%0A%0DIP_ADDRESS- - DATE_FORMAT] "GET /forged-path HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" USER_AGENT" may add the log line into Apache "access_log" (for example). Different applications may require different encodings of the carriage return and line feed characters.
Directly through log file or database manipulation, modify existing log entries.
Prerequisites
Target server software must be a HTTP server that performs web logging.
Skills Required
[Level: Low]
To input faked entries into Web logs
Resources Required
Ability to send specially formatted HTTP request to web server
Consequences
This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the attack pattern. The Scope identifies the security property that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in their attack. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a pattern will be used to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
Scope
Impact
Likelihood
Integrity
Modify Data
Mitigations
Design: Use input validation before writing to web log
Design: Validate all log data before it is output
Example Instances
Most web servers have a public interface, even if the majority of the site is password protected, there is usually at least a login site and brochureware that is publicly available. HTTP requests to the site are also generally logged to a Web log. From an attacker point of view, standard HTTP requests containing a malicious payload can be sent to the public website (with no other access required), when those requests appear in the log (such as http://victimsite/index.html?< malicious script> if they are followed by an administrator this may be sufficient to probe the administrator's host or local network.
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.
CAPEC mappings to ATT&CK techniques leverage an inheritance model to streamline and minimize direct CAPEC/ATT&CK mappings. Inheritance of a mapping is indicated by text stating that the parent CAPEC has relevant ATT&CK mappings. Note that the ATT&CK Enterprise Framework does not use an inheritance model as part of the mapping to CAPEC.
Relevant to the ATT&CK taxonomy mapping (see
parent
)
References
[REF-1] G. Hoglund and
G. McGraw. "Exploiting Software: How to Break Code". Addison-Wesley. 2004-02.
Content History
Submissions
Submission Date
Submitter
Organization
2014-06-23
(Version 2.6)
CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
Modifications
Modification Date
Modifier
Organization
2017-05-01
(Version 2.10)
CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
Updated Related_Weaknesses
2021-06-24
(Version 3.5)
CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
Updated Related_Weaknesses
2022-09-29
(Version 3.8)
CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
Updated @Name
Previous Entry Names
Change Date
Previous Entry Name
2022-09-29
(Version 3.8)
Web Logs Tampering
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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.
Content History
