CAPEC-271: Schema Poisoning

MITRE CAPEC attack pattern

Description

An adversary corrupts or modifies the content of a schema for the purpose of undermining the security of the target. Schemas provide the structure and content definitions for resources used by an application. By replacing or modifying a schema, the adversary can affect how the application handles or interprets a resource, often leading to possible denial of service, entering into an unexpected state, or recording incomplete data.

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-15

Prerequisites

• Some level of access to modify the target schema.
• The schema used by the target application must be improperly secured against unauthorized modification and manipulation.

Consequences

• Availability: Unreliable Execution, Resource Consumption
• Integrity: Modify Data
• Confidentiality: Read Data

Mitigations

• Design: Protect the schema against unauthorized modification.
• Implementation: For applications that use a known schema, use a local copy or a known good repository instead of the schema reference supplied in the schema document.
• Implementation: For applications that leverage remote schemas, use the HTTPS protocol to prevent modification of traffic in transit and to avoid unauthorized modification.

Source

• MITRE CAPEC CAPEC-271