Adversaries may prepare an operational environment to infect systems that visit a website over the normal course of browsing. Endpoint systems may be compromised through browsing to adversary controlled sites, as in Drive-by Compromise. In such cases, the user's web browser is typically targeted for exploitation (often not requiring any extra user interaction once landing on the site), but adversaries may also set up websites for non-exploitation behavior such as Application Access Token. Prior to Drive-by Compromise, adversaries must stage resources needed to deliver that exploit to users who browse to an adversary controlled site. Drive-by content can be staged on adversary controlled infrastructure that has been acquired (Acquire Infrastructure) or previously compromised (Compromise Infrastructure).
Adversaries may upload or inject malicious web content, such as JavaScript, into websites.(Citation: FireEye CFR Watering Hole 2012)(Citation: Gallagher 2015) This may be done in a number of ways, including:
In addition to staging content to exploit a user's web browser, adversaries may also stage scripting content to profile the user's browser (as in Gather Victim Host Information) to ensure it is vulnerable prior to attempting exploitation.(Citation: ATT ScanBox)
Websites compromised by an adversary and used to stage a drive-by may be ones visited by a specific community, such as government, a particular industry, or region, where the goal is to compromise a specific user or set of users based on a shared interest. This kind of targeted campaign is referred to a strategic web compromise or watering hole attack.
Adversaries may purchase domains similar to legitimate domains (ex: homoglyphs, typosquatting, different top-level domain, etc.) during acquisition of infrastructure (Domains) to help facilitate Drive-by Compromise.
Detection of Drive-by Target
Pre-compromise: Pre-compromise mitigations involve proactive measures and defenses implemented to prevent adversaries from successfully identifying and exploiting weaknesses during the Reconnaissance and Resource Development phases of an attack. These activities focus on reducing an organization's attack surface, identify adversarial preparation efforts, and increase the difficulty for attackers to conduct successful operations. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures:
Limit Information Exposure:
Protect Domain and DNS Infrastructure:
External Monitoring:
Threat Intelligence:
Content and Email Protections:
Training and Awareness:
No cross-framework mappings available