CAPEC-38

Detailed 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: Very High
Leveraging/Manipulating Configuration File Search Paths

Description

This pattern of attack sees an adversary load a malicious resource into a program's standard path so that when a known command is executed then the system instead executes the malicious component. The adversary can either modify the search path a program uses, like a PATH variable or classpath, or they can manipulate resources on the path to point to their malicious components. J2EE applications and other component based applications that are built from multiple binaries can have very long list of dependencies to execute. If one of these libraries and/or references is controllable by the attacker then application controls can be circumvented by the attacker.

Prerequisites

The attacker must be able to write to redirect search paths on the victim host.

Mitigations

Design: Enforce principle of least privilege

Design: Ensure that the program's compound parts, including all system dependencies, classpath, path, and so on, are secured to the same or higher level assurance as the program

Implementation: Host integrity monitoring

Skills Required

[Low] To identify and execute against an over-privileged system interface