Watering hole attack

Watering hole attack (or “waterhole attack”) is a type of cyber attack used by malicious actors to target a specific population of users and compromise their systems. The attack works by identifying popular websites or web resources used by a specific group of users, either through reconnaissance or information-gathering techniques like social engineering. The attacker then infects the website or web resource with malicious code, which is used to infect the users’ systems and allow further malicious activity.

Watering hole attacks can be used to collect sensitive information, such as passwords and login credentials, launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, infect additional systems, or as a method of dropping malicious code or payloads on users’ systems. As watering hole attacks focus on targeting specific vulnerabilities that are known to be used by particular user groups, they can be difficult to detect and mitigate.

The term “watering hole” is derived from a predatory strategy, commonly employed by lions, in which they wait near a watering hole and attack any unsuspecting prey that comes to drink the water. Similarly, the attacker identifies a popular resource frequented by their target population, waits for users to connect to the resource, and then attacks them with malicious code.

To help protect against watering hole attacks, IT professionals should take steps to identify vulnerable online resources, install software updates and patches as soon as they become available, and educate users about safe browsing habits. Additionally, deploying robust intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS) can help detect malicious code before it is able to infect computers and systems.