CAPEC Details
Name Exploit Non-Production Interfaces
Likelyhood of attack Typical severity
Low High
Summary An adversary exploits a sample, demonstration, test, or debug interface that is unintentionally enabled on a production system, with the goal of gleaning information or leveraging functionality that would otherwise be unavailable.
Prerequisites The target must have configured non-production interfaces and failed to secure or remove them when brought into a production environment.
Execution Flow
Step Phase Description Techniques
1 Explore [Determine Vulnerable Interface] An adversary explores a target system for sample or test interfaces that have not been disabled by a system administrator and which may be exploitable by the adversary.
  • If needed, the adversary explores an organization's network to determine if any specific systems of interest exist.
2 Exploit [Leverage Test Interface to Execute Attacks] Once an adversary has discovered a system with a non-production interface, the interface is leveraged to exploit the system and/or conduct various attacks.
  • The adversary can leverage the sample or test interface to conduct several types of attacks such as Adversary-in-the-Middle attacks (CAPEC-94), keylogging, Cross Site Scripting (XSS), hardware manipulation attacks, and more.
Solutions Ensure that production systems to not contain non-production interfaces and that these interfaces are only used in development environments.
Related Weaknesses
CWE ID Description
CWE-489 Active Debug Code
CWE-1209 Failure to Disable Reserved Bits
CWE-1259 Improper Restriction of Security Token Assignment
CWE-1267 Policy Uses Obsolete Encoding
CWE-1270 Generation of Incorrect Security Tokens
CWE-1294 Insecure Security Identifier Mechanism
CWE-1295 Debug Messages Revealing Unnecessary Information
CWE-1296 Incorrect Chaining or Granularity of Debug Components
CWE-1302 Missing Security Identifier
CWE-1313 Hardware Allows Activation of Test or Debug Logic at Runtime
Related CAPECS
CAPEC ID Description
CAPEC-113 An adversary manipulates the use or processing of an interface (e.g. Application Programming Interface (API) or System-on-Chip (SoC)) resulting in an adverse impact upon the security of the system implementing the interface. This can allow the adversary to bypass access control and/or execute functionality not intended by the interface implementation, possibly compromising the system which integrates the interface. Interface manipulation can take on a number of forms including forcing the unexpected use of an interface or the use of an interface in an unintended way.