Honeypot Processors: File Processor: Incident - Suspicious Filename
Complexity: Suspicious (1.0)
Default Response: 10x = Suspicious Resource Enumeration Incident.
Cause: WebApp Secure has a list of file tokens which represent potentially sensitive files. For example, developers will often rename source files with a ".bck" extension during debugging, and sometimes they forget to delete the backup after they are done. Hackers often look for these left over source files. WebApp Secure is configured to look for any request to a file with a ".bck" extension (as well as any other configured extensions), and trigger this incident if the file does not exist. An incident will not be triggered if the file does in fact exist, and the extension is not configured to block the response. This is to avoid legitimate files being flagged as suspicious filenames.
Behavior: There are specific files that many websites host, that contain valuable information for a hacker. These files generally include data such as passwords, SQL schema's, source code, and so on. When hackers try to breach a site, they will often check to see if they can locate some of these special files in order to make their jobs easier. For example, if a hacker sees that the home page is called "index.php", they can try and request "index.php.bak", because if it exists, it will be returned as raw source code. This is usually an effort to exploit a "Predictable Resource Location" vulnerability. Because this incident is only created if the file being requested does not actually exist, it does not represent a successful exploit.
 | Note: For information on the attack types mentioned here, go to The Web Application Security Consortium Web Site and search for the attack name to learn more about it. |
