CAPEC Details
Name Shoulder Surfing
Likelyhood of attack Typical severity
High High
Summary In a shoulder surfing attack, an adversary observes an unaware individual's keystrokes, screen content, or conversations with the goal of obtaining sensitive information. One motive for this attack is to obtain sensitive information about the target for financial, personal, political, or other gains. From an insider threat perspective, an additional motive could be to obtain system/application credentials or cryptographic keys. Shoulder surfing attacks are accomplished by observing the content "over the victim's shoulder", as implied by the name of this attack.
Prerequisites The adversary typically requires physical proximity to the target's environment, in order to observe their screen or conversation. This may not be the case if the adversary is able to record the target and obtain sensitive information upon review of the recording.
Solutions Be mindful of your surroundings when discussing or viewing sensitive information in public areas. Pertaining to insider threats, ensure that sensitive information is not displayed to nor discussed around individuals without need-to-know access to said information.
Related Weaknesses
CWE ID Description
CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
CWE-359 Exposure of Private Personal Information to an Unauthorized Actor
Related CAPECS
CAPEC ID Description
CAPEC-560 An adversary guesses or obtains (i.e. steals or purchases) legitimate credentials (e.g. userID/password) to achieve authentication and to perform authorized actions under the guise of an authenticated user or service.
CAPEC-651 An adversary intercepts a form of communication (e.g. text, audio, video) by way of software (e.g., microphone and audio recording application), hardware (e.g., recording equipment), or physical means (e.g., physical proximity). The goal of eavesdropping is typically to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information about the target for financial, personal, political, or other gains. Eavesdropping is different from a sniffing attack as it does not take place on a network-based communication channel (e.g., IP traffic). Instead, it entails listening in on the raw audio source of a conversation between two or more parties.