| Name |
Poison Web Service Registry |
|
| Likelyhood of attack |
Typical severity |
| High |
Very High |
|
| Summary |
SOA and Web Services often use a registry to perform look up, get schema information, and metadata about services. A poisoned registry can redirect (think phishing for servers) the service requester to a malicious service provider, provide incorrect information in schema or metadata (to effect a denial of service), and delete information about service provider interfaces. WS-Addressing is used to virtualize services, provide return addresses and other routing information, however, unless the WS-Addressing headers are protected they are vulnerable to rewriting. The attacker that can rewrite WS-addressing information gains the ability to route service requesters to any service providers, and the ability to route service provider response to any service. Content in a registry is deployed by the service provider. The registry in an SOA or Web Services system can be accessed by the service requester via UDDI or other protocol. The basic flow for the attacker consists of either altering the data at rest in the registry or uploading malicious content by spoofing a service provider. The service requester is then redirected to send its requests and/or responses to services the attacker controls. |
| Prerequisites |
The attacker must be able to write to resources or redirect access to the service registry. |
| Solutions | Design: Enforce principle of least privilege Design: Harden registry server and file access permissions Implementation: Implement communications to and from the registry using secure protocols |
| Related Weaknesses |
|
CWE ID
|
Description
|
| CWE-74 |
Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component ('Injection') |
| CWE-285 |
Improper Authorization |
| CWE-693 |
Protection Mechanism Failure |
|
| Related CAPECS |
|
CAPEC ID
|
Description
|
| CAPEC-203 |
An adversary exploits a weakness in authorization in order to modify content within a registry (e.g., Windows Registry, Mac plist, application registry). Editing registry information can permit the adversary to hide configuration information or remove indicators of compromise to cover up activity. Many applications utilize registries to store configuration and service information. As such, modification of registry information can affect individual services (affecting billing, authorization, or even allowing for identity spoofing) or the overall configuration of a targeted application. For example, both Java RMI and SOAP use registries to track available services. Changing registry values is sometimes a preliminary step towards completing another attack pattern, but given the long term usage of many registry values, manipulation of registry information could be its own end. |
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