CAPEC-646: Peripheral Footprinting

MITRE CAPEC attack pattern

Description

Adversaries may attempt to obtain information about attached peripheral devices and components connected to a computer system. Examples may include discovering the presence of iOS devices by searching for backups, analyzing the Windows registry to determine what USB devices have been connected, or infecting a victim system with malware to report when a USB device has been connected. This may allow the adversary to gain additional insight about the system or network environment, which may be useful in constructing further 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-200

ATT&CK techniques: T1120

Prerequisites

• The adversary needs either physical or remote access to the victim system.

Skills required

• Medium: The adversary needs to be able to infect the victim system in a manner that gives them remote access.
• Medium: If analyzing the Windows registry, the adversary must understand the registry structure to know where to look for devices.

Mitigations

• Identify programs that may be used to acquire peripheral information and block them by using a software restriction policy or tools that restrict program execution by using a process allowlist.

Source

• MITRE CAPEC CAPEC-646