CAPEC-2

Standard Abstraction Level
Meta — Very abstract, high-level category
Standard — Specific enough to understand
Detailed — Tied to specific technique Draft MITRE CAPEC Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development
Incomplete — Partially defined
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CAPEC Likelihood: High Severity: Medium
Inducing Account Lockout

Description

An attacker leverages the security functionality of the system aimed at thwarting potential attacks to launch a denial of service attack against a legitimate system user. Many systems, for instance, implement a password throttling mechanism that locks an account after a certain number of incorrect log in attempts. An attacker can leverage this throttling mechanism to lock a legitimate user out of their own account. The weakness that is being leveraged by an attacker is the very security feature that has been put in place to counteract attacks.

Prerequisites

The system has a lockout mechanism.

An attacker must be able to reproduce behavior that would result in an account being locked.

Mitigations

Implement intelligent password throttling mechanisms such as those which take IP address into account, in addition to the login name.

When implementing security features, consider how they can be misused and made to turn on themselves.

Skills Required

[Low] No programming skills or computer knowledge is needed. An attacker can easily use this attack pattern following the Execution Flow above.