CAPEC-65

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
Sniff Application Code

Description

An adversary passively sniffs network communications and captures application code bound for an authorized client. Once obtained, they can use it as-is, or through reverse-engineering glean sensitive information or exploit the trust relationship between the client and server. Such code may belong to a dynamic update to the client, a patch being applied to a client component or any such interaction where the client is authorized to communicate with the server.

Prerequisites

The attacker must have the ability to place themself in the communication path between the client and server.

The targeted application must receive some application code from the server; for example, dynamic updates, patches, applets or scripts.

The attacker must be able to employ a sniffer on the network without being detected.

Mitigations

Design: Encrypt all communication between the client and server.

Implementation: Use SSL, SSH, SCP.

Operation: Use "ifconfig/ipconfig" or other tools to detect the sniffer installed in the network.

Skills Required

[Medium] The attacker needs to setup a sniffer for a sufficient period of time so as to capture meaningful quantities of code. The presence of the sniffer should not be detected on the network. Also if the attacker plans to employ an adversary-in-the-middle attack (CAPEC-94), the client or server must not realize this. Finally, the attacker needs to regenerate source code from binary code if the need be.