CAPEC-673 Metadata
Likelihood of Attack
Medium
Typical Severity
High
Overview
Summary
Software produced by a reputable developer is clandestinely infected with malicious code and then digitally signed by the unsuspecting developer, where the software has been altered via a compromised software development or build process prior to being signed. The receiver or user of the software has no reason to believe that it is anything but legitimate and proceeds to deploy it to organizational systems. This attack differs from CAPEC-206, since the developer is inadvertently signing malicious code they believe to be legitimate and which they are unware of any malicious modifications.
Prerequisites
An adversary would need to have access to a targeted developer’s software development environment, including to their software build processes, where the adversary could ensure code maliciously tainted prior to a build process is included in software packages built.
Potential Solutions / Mitigations
Have a security concept of operations (CONOPS) for the IDE that includes: Protecting the IDE via logical isolation using firewall and DMZ technologies/architectures; Maintaining strict security administration and configuration management of configuration management tools, developmental software and dependency code repositories, compilers, and system build tools. Employ intrusion detection and malware detection capabilities on IDE systems where feasible.
Related CAPECs
| CAPEC ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CAPEC-444 | An adversary modifies a technology, product, or component during its development to acheive a negative impact once the system is deployed. The goal of the adversary is to modify the system in such a way that the negative impact can be leveraged when the system is later deployed. Development alteration attacks may include attacks that insert malicious logic into the system's software, modify or replace hardware components, and other attacks which negatively impact the system during development. These attacks generally require insider access to modify source code or to tamper with hardware components. The product is then delivered to the user where the negative impact can be leveraged at a later time. |
Taxonomy Mappings
Taxonomy: ATTACK
| Entry ID | Entry Name |
|---|---|
| 1195.002 | Supply Chain Compromise: Compromise Software Supply Chain |
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