Adversaries may manipulate products or product delivery mechanisms prior to receipt by a final consumer for the purpose of data or system compromise.
Supply chain compromise can take place at any stage of the supply chain including:
While supply chain compromise can impact any component of hardware or software, adversaries looking to gain execution have often focused on malicious additions to legitimate software in software distribution or update channels.[3][4][5] Targeting may be specific to a desired victim set or malicious software may be distributed to a broad set of consumers but only move on to additional tactics on specific victims.[6][3][5] Popular open source projects that are used as dependencies in many applications may also be targeted as a means to add malicious code to users of the dependency.[7]
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| G1003 | Ember Bear |
Ember Bear has compromised information technology providers and software developers providing services to targets of interest, building initial access to ultimate victims at least in part through compromise of service providers that work with the victim organizations.[8] |
| S1148 | Raccoon Stealer |
Raccoon Stealer has been distributed through cracked software downloads.[9] |
| G0034 | Sandworm Team |
Sandworm Team staged compromised versions of legitimate software installers on forums to achieve initial, untargetetd access in victim environments.[10] |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1013 | Application Developer Guidance |
Application developers should be cautious when selecting third-party libraries to integrate into their application. Additionally, where possible, developers should lock software dependencies to specific versions rather than pulling the latest version on build.[11] |
| M1046 | Boot Integrity |
Use secure methods to boot a system and verify the integrity of the operating system and loading mechanisms. |
| M1033 | Limit Software Installation |
Where possible, consider requiring developers to pull from internal repositories containing verified and approved packages rather than from external ones.[11] |
| M1051 | Update Software |
A patch management process should be implemented to check unused dependencies, unmaintained and/or previously vulnerable dependencies, unnecessary features, components, files, and documentation. |
| M1018 | User Account Management |
Implement robust user account management practices to limit permissions associated with software execution. Ensure that software runs with the lowest necessary privileges, avoiding the use of root or administrator accounts when possible. By restricting permissions, you can minimize the risk of propagation and unauthorized actions in the event of a supply chain compromise, reducing the attack surface for adversaries to exploit within compromised systems. |
| M1016 | Vulnerability Scanning |
Continuous monitoring of vulnerability sources and the use of automatic and manual code review tools should also be implemented as well.[12] |
| ID | Data Source | Data Component | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS0022 | File | File Metadata |
Use verification of distributed binaries through hash checking or other integrity checking mechanisms. Scan downloads for malicious signatures and attempt to test software and updates prior to deployment while taking note of potential suspicious activity. |
| DS0013 | Sensor Health | Host Status |
Perform physical inspection of hardware to look for potential tampering. Perform integrity checking on pre-OS boot mechanisms that can be manipulated for malicious purposes and compare against known good baseline behavior. |