What is a Masquerade Attack in Cybersecurity?

Masquerade means to assume someone else's identity. In cybersecurity, these attacks involve using vulnerable devices, stealing digital or hash signatures, IP addresses, certificates, or Work IDs, and other forms of stolen or mimicked credentials to fool the system and gain access to a higher level of access, to perform admin-level actions.?

This can involve leaking information, implanting remote access viruses, gaining confidential and financial information, or manipulating data to cause harm.?

Using your colleague's ID card to log in to LinkedIn Premium is a basic-level example of a masquerade attack. Another example is using a colleague's desktop in their absence to change, delete, or manipulate data, causing reputational damage.

That is why employees are told to lock their keyboards and screens during breaks. In this article, we will dive deep into the processes, attack methods, and defence against masquerade attacks and look at case studies.

How Masquerade Attack Works?

Generally, the attack will be performed in these steps:

Step 1: Information gathering or more professionally: Research

The attackers will try to research in-depth about your organization. They will try to find out more about these:

• Finding System loopholes

(outdated firmware & apps, open ports)

• Network ranges and infrastructure

(IP addresses, subnet masks, router configurations)

• Authority hierarchy structure and connections

(company hierarchy, departmental contacts, vendor partnerships)

• Contact or login info: such as Email, phone numbers and usernames

(Organizations’ phone directories, employee data, and public social media profiles)

Sources attackers research from:

• Using social media to phish employees into revealing sensitive info via email or phone

• Network scanning: Detecting and locating devices connected to the network, like computers, servers, and printers.

Enumeration: Making a list of what was found during the scan.?

1. The operating systems (Windows or macOS etc.)
2. The services running (web, email servers.)
3. What type of device it is (computer, laptop, phone, server, printer, etc.)
4. What are the loopholes?

• Checking out publicly available information (social media, websites)

(searching company websites, LinkedIn, or Twitter for useful data)

Step 2: Stealing credentials and identity.

Attackers will gain access to credentials from phishing, using keyloggers, and implanting malware.

In terms of phishing, the attacker will try to send a lot of phishing emails and SMS to a huge number of employees of the target company. If by chance few of them click on it, the link will redirect the employees to rigged websites.

This website might look like the original or the email itself might have some manipulating instructions disguised as orders from higher managers. Once the employee logs in to the website, their credential will be stolen.

Step 3: Trying to be the “Among Us”

The attacker will use the fake or stolen ID of the employee to log into the system.?

This can be done by manipulating a user's session cookies to access their confidential data like a bank account and creating a fake SSL/TLS certificate to impersonate a legitimate website or server. A session can be stolen or manipulated? by using JavaScript:

//

const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

xhr.open('GET', '(link unavailable)', true);

xhr.setRequestHeader('Cookie', 'session_id=STOLEN_SESSION_COOKIE');

xhr.send();

Step 4: Data stealing and causing problems

Now the attacker wants to abuse the access to cause problems to the target. This includes stealing sensitive data such as passwords, bank information, and personal information, as well as downloading or uploading unauthorized files.?

Transferring data without permission, installing malware or backdoors to help them attack in future. Moving through the network and accessing more sensitive areas. By doing so, they can perform unauthorized actions like creating accounts, transferring funds, or disrupting and destroying systems and data.

The attacker's ultimate aim is to exploit the compromised system or network for financial gain, espionage, or sabotage.

There are different types of masquerade attacks

Till now you might have gotten the idea of what masquerade attacks are. On the very basic level, there are only two types of masquerade attacks: internal and external. Internal attacks involve dishonest employees.

They try to access data by stealing credentials from their manager and colleagues to cause harm. Like using ID, known password by observation, open system (desktop/system which you leave without locking), stolen fingerprint (in movies)etc.

External has many different types from phishing or spoofing on identity, credentials, password hashing, Kerberos TGT (Ticket-Granting Ticket) etc.

Defending Against Masquerade Attacks

Both organizations and individuals should be aware of the risk of losing to these types of cyber-attacks. We can protect the system by:

• Multi-Factor Authentication: Use MFA to ensure only legitimate users can access systems or networks.

• Training an AI to detect abnormal behaviour by teaching it what normal behaviour is.

• Implementing strong password policies and monitoring for credential stuffing attacks. Such session in & out, screen locking and rebooting to clean hashes.
• Secure protocols: Use TLS/SSL with valid certificates and enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).

• Session management: Implement secure session token generation, validation, and revocation.

• DNS security: Enable DNSSEC and use trusted DNS providers.

To sum this up

Masquerade attackers attempt to crack weak passwords, steal session tokens, create fake IDs and manipulate DNS records to change the data or redirect users to fake websites. In order to pose as a user, the attacker collects data and steals login credentials.

They access a system or network by using the identity they stole. Once inside, they carry out malicious deeds or steal sensitive data. Since the attacker leaves no evidence, it is challenging to identify the attack.

It's critical to put in place suitable safety measures and procedures to guard against these attacks since they have the potential for severe damage to anyone, including financial losses and harm to one's reputation.