CoreQ Academy4.9 Explain common attacks against specialized systems.
Mobile, AI, OT, NFC, Bluetooth and RFID systems each have their own attack surface. Some are safety-critical, so tests need extra care.
Mobile attacks
- Mobile attacks
- Attacks against phones, tablets and their apps.
- Information disclosure
- Apps leaking data through logs, backups, insecure storage or traffic.
- Jailbreak/rooting
- Removing OS restrictions to inspect apps; also a risk when users do it.
- Permission abuse
- Apps requesting or misusing excessive permissions.
AI attacks
- AI attacks
- Attacks on AI-enabled applications.
- Prompt injection
- Input that overrides an AI model's instructions.
- Model manipulation
- Influencing model behaviour through poisoned data or feedback.
OT attacks
- OT
- Operational technology controlling physical processes.
- Register manipulation
- Writing values to PLC registers to change process behaviour.
- CAN bus attack
- Injecting messages on vehicle Controller Area Network buses, which lack authentication.
- Modbus attack
- Abusing the unauthenticated Modbus protocol to read or write device values.
- Plaintext attack
- Reading or altering unencrypted OT protocol traffic.
- Replay attack
- Capturing valid commands and resending them.
Short-range wireless
- Near-field communication (NFC)
- Very short-range communication used for payments and badges; risks include relay and skimming.
- Bluejacking
- Sending unsolicited messages to Bluetooth devices.
- Radio-frequency identification (RFID)
- Badges and tags that can be read or cloned.
- Bluetooth spamming
- Flooding nearby devices with Bluetooth pairing or advertisement requests.
Tools
- Scapy
- Python packet manipulation library for crafting and decoding packets, including OT protocols.
- tcprelay
- Relays or replays captured traffic (used for replay testing).
- Wireshark/tcpdump
- Captures and dissects specialised protocols such as Modbus.
- MobSF
- Mobile Security Framework: automated static and dynamic analysis of Android and iOS apps.
- Frida
- Dynamic instrumentation toolkit to hook functions in running apps.
- Drozer
- Android security testing framework for app components and IPC.
- Android Debug Bridge (ADB)
- Command-line interface to Android devices for installing apps, pulling files and running commands.
- Bluestrike
- Bluetooth testing tool for discovering and probing Bluetooth devices.
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Original CoreQ Academy material, mapped to objective 4.9 of the publicly available CompTIA PenTest+ PT0-003 exam objectives (Exam objectives V3, document version 5.0). Not affiliated with or endorsed by CompTIA. Contains no exam questions.