This type of attack involves an attacker leveraging meta-characters in email headers to inject improper behavior into email programs. Email software has become increasingly sophisticated and feature-rich. In addition, email applications are ubiquitous and connected directly to the Web making them ideal targets to launch and propagate attacks. As the user demand for new functionality in email applications grows, they become more like browsers with complex rendering and plug in routines. As more email functionality is included and abstracted from the user, this creates opportunities for attackers. Virtually all email applications do not list email header information by default, however the email header contains valuable attacker vectors for the attacker to exploit particularly if the behavior of the email client application is known. Meta-characters are hidden from the user, but can contain scripts, enumerations, probes, and other attacks against the user's system.
Description
Attack Execution Flow
Step 1
Experiment[Identify and characterize metacharacter-processing vulnerabilities in email headers] An attacker creates emails with headers containing various metacharacter-based malicious payloads in order to determine whether the target application processes the malicious content and in what manner it does so.
Use an automated tool (fuzzer) to create malicious emails headers containing metacharacter-based payloads.
Manually tampering email headers to inject malicious metacharacter-based payload content in them.
[Identificare e caratterizzare le vulnerabilità di elaborazione dei metacaratteri negli header delle email] Un attaccante crea email con header contenenti payload dannosi basati su metacaratteri al fine di determinare se l'applicazione target elabora il contenuto dannoso e in che modo lo fa.
Utilizzare uno strumento automatizzato (fuzzer) per creare header di email dannosi contenenti payload basati su metacaratteri.
Manipolazione manuale degli header delle email per iniettare contenuto dannoso basato su metacaratteri.
Attack Techniques
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Use an automated tool (fuzzer) to create malicious emails headers containing metacharacter-based payloads.
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Manually tampering email headers to inject malicious metacharacter-based payload content in them.IT: Utilizza uno strumento automatizzato (fuzzer) per creare intestazioni di email dannose contenenti payload basati su metacaratteri.
Step 2
ExploitAn attacker leverages vulnerabilities identified during the Experiment Phase to inject malicious email headers and cause the targeted email application to exhibit behavior outside of its expected constraints.
Send emails with specifically-constructed, metacharacter-based malicious payloads in the email headers to targeted systems running email processing applications identified as vulnerable during the Experiment Phase.
Un attaccante sfrutta vulnerabilità identificate durante la Fase di Sperimentazione per iniettare intestazioni email dannose e far sì che l'applicazione email target mostri comportamenti al di fuori dei suoi vincoli previsti.
Invia email con payload dannosi basati su metacaratteri, appositamente costruiti, nelle intestazioni email ai sistemi target che eseguono applicazioni di elaborazione email identificate come vulnerabili durante la Fase di Sperimentazione.
Attack Techniques
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Send emails with specifically-constructed, metacharacter-based malicious payloads in the email headers to targeted systems running email processing applications identified as vulnerable during the Experiment Phase.