Detailed attack pattern
Draft
CAPEC-476: Signature Spoofing by Misrepresentation
An attacker exploits a weakness in the parsing or display code of the recipient software to generate a data blob containing a supposedly valid signature, but the signer's identity is falsely represented, which can lead to the attacker manipulating the recipient software or its victim user to perform compromising actions.
Last updated
High
Typical severity
Per MITRE
Low
Likelihood of attack
Per MITRE
1
Related weaknesses
CWEs this targets
Detailed
Abstraction
MITRE classification
Overview
CAPEC-476 (Signature Spoofing by Misrepresentation) is a detailed-level attack pattern catalogued by MITRE in the Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC). It describes a recurring method attackers use to exploit software weaknesses.
What the attacker needs
Prerequisites
- Recipient is using signature verification software that does not clearly indicate potential homographs in the signer identity.Recipient is using signature verification software that contains a parsing vulnerability, or allows control characters in the signer identity field, such that a signature is mistakenly displayed as valid and from a known or authoritative signer.
Skills required
- High skill: Attacker needs to understand the layout and composition of data blobs used by the target application.
- High skill: To discover a specific vulnerability, attacker needs to reverse engineer signature parsing, signature verification and signer representation code.
- High skill: Attacker may be required to create malformed data blobs and know how to insert them in a location that the recipient will visit.
How to mitigate it
Defenses that reduce the risk of CAPEC-476.
- Ensure the application is using parsing and data display techniques that will accurately display control characters, international symbols and markings, and ultimately recognize potential homograph attacks.