CAPEC-537

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: Low Severity: High
Infiltration of Hardware Development Environment

Description

An adversary, leveraging the ability to manipulate components of primary support systems and tools within the development and production environments, inserts malicious software within the hardware and/or firmware development environment. The infiltration purpose is to alter developed hardware components in a system destined for deployment at the victim's organization, for the purpose of disruption or further compromise.

Prerequisites

The victim must use email or removable media from systems running the IDE (or systems adjacent to the IDE systems).

The victim must have a system running exploitable applications and/or a vulnerable configuration to allow for initial infiltration.

The adversary must have working knowledge of some if not all of the components involved in the IDE system as well as the infrastructure.

Mitigations

Verify software downloads and updates to ensure they have not been modified be adversaries

Leverage antivirus tools to detect known malware

Do not download software from untrusted sources

Educate designers, developers, engineers, etc. on social engineering attacks to avoid downloading malicious software via attacks such as phishing attacks

Skills Required

[Medium] Intelligence about the manufacturer's operating environment and infrastructure.

[High] Ability to develop, deploy, and maintain a stealth malicious backdoor program remotely in what is essentially a hostile environment.

[High] Development skills to construct malicious attachments that can be used to exploit vulnerabilities in typical desktop applications or system configurations. The malicious attachments should be crafted well enough to bypass typical defensive systems (IDS, anti-virus, etc)