CAPEC-2: Inducing Account Lockout

MITRE CAPEC attack pattern

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.

Where this sits in the chain

A finding maps to a weakness (CWE), a weakness is exploited by an attack pattern (CAPEC), and an attack pattern shows up in ATT&CK as observed adversary behaviour. This page is the middle hop.

Weaknesses exploited: CWE-645

ATT&CK techniques: T1531

Prerequisites

• The system has a lockout mechanism.
• An attacker must be able to reproduce behavior that would result in an account being locked.

Skills required

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

Consequences

• Availability: Resource Consumption

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.

Source

• MITRE CAPEC CAPEC-2