Watering hole attacks infect popular a website or an online platform that is frequently visited by the target individuals or organizations. The term “watering hole” is derived from the predatory behavior of some animals that lie in wait near watering holes to ambush their prey.
It requires careful planning on the attacker’s part to find weaknesses in specific sites. They look for existing vulnerabilities that are not known and patched — such weaknesses are deemed zero-day exploits.
Here’s how a typical watering hole attack unfolds:
- Target identification: The attacker first identifies a specific group of individuals or organizations they want to target. These targets often share common interests, such as employees of a particular company or members of an industry association.
- Reconnaissance: The attacker conducts reconnaissance to identify websites or online platforms that are frequently visited by the target group. This could involve monitoring internet traffic, analyzing social media interactions, or identifying industry-specific websites.
- Compromising the website: Once the attacker has identified a suitable watering hole, they exploit vulnerabilities in the website’s code or infrastructure to gain unauthorized access. This can be achieved through methods like injecting malicious code into the website or compromising the website’s content management system.
- Delivery of malware: After successfully compromising the website, the attacker injects malware into the site or redirects visitors to a malicious domain under their control. The malware can be delivered through drive-by downloads, malicious scripts, or phishing techniques.
- Infection: When the target individuals or organizations visit the compromised website, they unknowingly download or execute the malware. The malware may exploit vulnerabilities in their devices or software, allowing the attacker to gain unauthorized access, steal sensitive information, or establish a foothold for further attacks.
Watering hole attacks have several advantages for attackers:
- They exploit the trust individuals or organizations have in the compromised website, increasing the likelihood of successful infections.
- They can target multiple victims by compromising a single website that attracts a large number of visitors from the target group.
- They can bypass security measures implemented by individual targets since the attack is initiated from a trusted source.
