T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Mappings

Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users. Endpoint DoS can be performed by exhausting the system resources those services are hosted on or exploiting the system to cause a persistent crash condition. Example services include websites, email services, DNS, and web-based applications. Adversaries have been observed conducting DoS attacks for political purposes(Citation: FireEye OpPoisonedHandover February 2016) and to support other malicious activities, including distraction(Citation: FSISAC FraudNetDoS September 2012), hacktivism, and extortion.(Citation: Symantec DDoS October 2014)

An Endpoint DoS denies the availability of a service without saturating the network used to provide access to the service. Adversaries can target various layers of the application stack that is hosted on the system used to provide the service. These layers include the Operating Systems (OS), server applications such as web servers, DNS servers, databases, and the (typically web-based) applications that sit on top of them. Attacking each layer requires different techniques that take advantage of bottlenecks that are unique to the respective components. A DoS attack may be generated by a single system or multiple systems spread across the internet, which is commonly referred to as a distributed DoS (DDoS).

To perform DoS attacks against endpoint resources, several aspects apply to multiple methods, including IP address spoofing and botnets.

Adversaries may use the original IP address of an attacking system, or spoof the source IP address to make the attack traffic more difficult to trace back to the attacking system or to enable reflection. This can increase the difficulty defenders have in defending against the attack by reducing or eliminating the effectiveness of filtering by the source address on network defense devices.

Botnets are commonly used to conduct DDoS attacks against networks and services. Large botnets can generate a significant amount of traffic from systems spread across the global internet. Adversaries may have the resources to build out and control their own botnet infrastructure or may rent time on an existing botnet to conduct an attack. In some of the worst cases for DDoS, so many systems are used to generate requests that each one only needs to send out a small amount of traffic to produce enough volume to exhaust the target's resources. In such circumstances, distinguishing DDoS traffic from legitimate clients becomes exceedingly difficult. Botnets have been used in some of the most high-profile DDoS attacks, such as the 2012 series of incidents that targeted major US banks.(Citation: USNYAG IranianBotnet March 2016)

In cases where traffic manipulation is used, there may be points in the global network (such as high traffic gateway routers) where packets can be altered and cause legitimate clients to execute code that directs network packets toward a target in high volume. This type of capability was previously used for the purposes of web censorship where client HTTP traffic was modified to include a reference to JavaScript that generated the DDoS code to overwhelm target web servers.(Citation: ArsTechnica Great Firewall of China)

For attacks attempting to saturate the providing network, see Network Denial of Service.

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Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Mappings

Capability ID Capability Description Mapping Type ATT&CK ID ATT&CK Name Notes
CVE-2020-5735 Amcrest Cameras and NVR Stack-based Buffer Overflow Vulnerability secondary_impact T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service
Comments
CVE-2020-5735 is a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Amcrest cameras and NVR that allows an authenticated remote attacker to possibly execute unauthorized code over port 37777 and crash the device.
References
CVE-2023-6549 Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway Buffer Overflow Vulnerability primary_impact T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service
Comments
This buffer overflow vulnerability can be exploited to cause a denial of service.
References
CVE-2023-20109 Cisco IOS and IOS XE Group Encrypted Transport VPN Out-of-Bounds Write Vulnerability primary_impact T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service
Comments
This vulnerability is exploited by an authenticated, remote attacker who has administrative control of either a group member or a key server to execute arbitrary code on an affected device or cause the device to crash. This vulnerability has been identified as being exploited in the wild by Chinese adversary groups.
References
CVE-2023-44487 HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack Vulnerability primary_impact T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service
Comments
This vulnerability is exploited through a 'Rapid Reset' flaw in HTTP/2 endpoints. Attackers initiate this vulnerability by sending a crafted sequence of HTTP requests using HEADERS followed by RST_STREAM frames. This allows them to generate substantial traffic on targeted servers, significantly increasing CPU usage and leading to resource exhaustion without authentication.
References
CVE-2021-35394 Realtek Jungle SDK Remote Code Execution Vulnerability secondary_impact T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service
Comments
The vulnerability in Realtek Jungle chipsets is exploited by remote, unauthenticated attackers using UDP packets to a server on port 9034, enabling remote execution of arbitrary commands. The attack involves injecting a shell command that downloads and executes a shell script on the compromised device. This script downloads binaries for various CPU architectures, such as ARM, MIPS, and SuperH, primarily from the Mirai malware family, turning the device into a botnet node. The attack script connects to a malicious IP to download and execute malware, with threats mainly from Mirai, Gafgyt, and Mozi families. It also includes a new DDoS botnet called RedGoBot, developed in Golang. The script uses wget and curl to download botnet clients for different processor architectures. RedGoBot can perform DDoS attacks on various protocols, including HTTP, ICMP, TCP, UDP, VSE, and OpenVPN, upon receiving commands from the threat operator. Additionally, injected commands can write binary payloads to files for execution or reboot the targeted server to cause denial of service.
References

ATT&CK Subtechniques

Technique ID Technique Name Number of Mappings
T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation 1
T1499.002 Service Exhaustion Flood 2