CAPEC Definitions / CAPEC-30
CAPEC-30: Hijacking a Privileged Thread of Execution
An adversary hijacks a privileged thread of execution by injecting malicious code into a running process. By using a privleged thread to do their bidding, adversaries can evade process-based detection that would stop an attack that creates a new process. This can lead to an adversary gaining access to the process's memory and can also enable elevated privileges. The most common way to perform this attack is by suspending an existing thread and manipulating its memory.
Extended Description
No Extended Description.
Mitigations
Application Architects must be careful to design callback, signal, and similar asynchronous constructs such that they shed excess privilege prior to handing control to user-written (thus untrusted) code.
Application Architects must be careful to design privileged code blocks such that upon return (successful, failed, or unpredicted) that privilege is shed prior to leaving the block/scope.
Relationships with other CAPECs
CAPEC-233: Privilege Escalation
Prerequisites
The application in question employs a threaded model of execution with the threads operating at, or having the ability to switch to, a higher privilege level than normal users
In order to feasibly execute this class of attacks, the adversary must have the ability to hijack a privileged thread. This ability includes, but is not limited to, modifying environment variables that affect the process the thread belongs to, or calling native OS calls that can suspend and alter process memory. This does not preclude network-based attacks, but makes them conceptually more difficult to identify and execute.
Related Weaknesses
CWE-270: Privilege Context Switching Error
