Watering Hole Attacks

General Concept

• Definition: Attackers poison a trusted website frequented by a target organization.
• Objective: Gain access to a network by infecting a third-party site commonly visited by the organization’s employees.
• Example: Employees visiting a compromised local coffee shop or sandwich shop website.

Attack Mechanics

• Initial Research: Attackers identify third-party sites frequented by the target organization.
• Exploitation: Attacker employs various methods to compromise the third-party site, such as:
  • Finding and exploiting vulnerabilities on the third-party website's servers.
  • Sending malicious email attachments to the third-party website's administrators.
• Targeted Infection: Only specific IP addresses related to the target organization receive malicious payloads.
• Execution:
  • Malicious JavaScript files or other payloads are served when the target visits the compromised site.

Case Study: January 2017

• Targets: Polish Financial Supervision Authority, the national banking and stock commission of Mexico, and a state-owned bank in Uruguay.
• Method: Attachers added malicious JavaScript files on targeted sites.
• Specificity: Only IP addresses from specific financial organizations and banks were targeted.
• Outcome: Unclear if attackers achieved their objective, but they did infect multiple sites.

Defense Strategies

Layered Defense (Defense in Depth)

• Concept: Implement multiple security measures to increase the chances of detecting and mitigating attacks.
• Components:
  • Firewalls: Control incoming and outgoing network traffic.
  • Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS): Detect and block malicious activities.
    • Example: An IPS identifying malicious content missed by the firewall.
  • Antivirus Software: Protects endpoints from executing malicious code.
    • Example: Symantec antivirus blocking malicious JavaScript execution in the mentioned attack.
• Outcome: By combining these layers, organizations increase their likelihood of detecting and preventing attacks.

Summary

• Watering Hole attacks leverage trusted third-party sites to infect target organizations.
• Effective defense requires a combination of firewalls, IPS, antivirus software, and other layers of security to detect and thwart these sophisticated attacks.