CAPEC-519
Documentation Alteration to Cause Errors in System Design
An attacker with access to a manufacturer's documentation containing requirements allocation and software design processes maliciously alters the documentation in order to cause errors in system design. This allows the attacker to take advantage of a weakness in a deployed system of the manufacturer for malicious purposes.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-519: Documentation Alteration to Cause Errors in System Design: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/519.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/519?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
Prerequisites
Advanced knowledge of software capabilities of a manufacturer's product.
Access to the manufacturer's documentation.
Skills required
- High skill
Ability to read, interpret, and subsequently alter manufacturer's documentation to cause errors in system design.
- High skill
Ability to stealthly gain access via remote compromise or physical access to the manufacturer's documentation.
Mitigations
Digitize documents and cryptographically sign them to verify authenticity.
Password protect documents and make them read-only for unauthorized users.
Avoid emailing important documents and configurations.
Ensure deleted files are actually deleted.
Maintain multiple instances of the document across different privileged users for recovery and verification.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-447 Design Alteration
Examples
During operation, a firewall will restart various subsystems to reload and implement new rules as added by th…
During operation, a firewall will restart various subsystems to reload and implement new rules as added by the user. An attacker alters the software design dependencies in the manufacturer's documentation so that under certain predictable conditions the reload will fail to load in rules resulting in a "fail open" state. Once deployed at a victim site, this will allow the attacker to bypass the victim's firewall.
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