CAPEC Definitions

    CAPEC Definitions / CAPEC-116

    CAPEC-116: Excavation

    An adversary actively probes the target in a manner that is designed to solicit information that could be leveraged for malicious purposes.

    Severity:Medium
    Possibility:High

    Extended Description

    This is achieved by exploring the target via ordinary interactions for the purpose of gathering intelligence about the target, or by sending data that is syntactically invalid or non-standard in an attempt to produce a response that contains the desired data. As a result of these interactions, the adversary is able to obtain information from the target that aids the attacker in making inferences about its security, configuration, or potential vulnerabilities. Examplar exchanges with the target may trigger unhandled exceptions or verbose error messages that reveal information like stack traces, configuration information, path information, or database design. This type of attack also includes the manipulation of query strings in a URI to produce invalid SQL queries, or by trying alternative path values in the hope that the server will return useful information.

    Mitigations

    Minimize error/response output to only what is necessary for functional use or corrective language.

    Remove potentially sensitive information that is not necessary for the application's functionality.

    Relationships with other CAPECs

    CAPEC-163: Spear Phishing

    Prerequisites

    An adversary requires some way of interacting with the system.

    Related Weaknesses

    CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

    CWE-1243: Sensitive Non-Volatile Information Not Protected During Debug