Top Attack Patterns: What We Can Learn From 2024's Top 10

The top attack patterns of 2024 highlight the use of increasingly sophisticated techniques for bypassing input and security filters.

Securin’s analysis of CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) added in 2024 indicates that attackers are predominantly targeting client-side vulnerabilities, input validation flaws, and command injection vectors.

Among the Most Prevalent Attack Patterns:

Exploiting Trust in Client (CAPEC-22 - the most prevalent attack pattern)
Exploiting Multiple Input Interpretation Layers (CAPEC-43)
Command Line Execution through SQL Injection (CAPEC-108)
OS Command Injection (CAPEC-88)

What can defenders take from this? Let’s take a look at some of the trends we see emerging from the top attack patterns of 2024.

Where Attackers Are Focusing Their Efforts

From a technical perspective, the top attack patterns reveal a focus on exploiting client-side vulnerabilities, input validation flaws, and command injection techniques. Encoding and input manipulation techniques are heavily represented, indicating that attackers are actively bypassing input filters and validation mechanisms. Despite their “Old timers” status, we can see that SQL injection and OS command injection continue to pose significant threats, highlighting the persistent nature of these vulnerabilities.

CAPEC-22’s (Exploiting Trust in Client)position as the top attack pattern suggests that threat actors are actively exploiting weaknesses in client-server trust models, potentially bypassing authentication and authorization mechanisms.
CAPEC-43’s (Exploiting Multiple Input Interpretation Layers) prominence indicates that attackers are targeting inconsistencies in how different application components process user inputs. This technique has likely evolved to bypass more sophisticated input validation methods.
CAPEC-108 (Command Line Execution through SQL Injection) and CAPEC-88’s (OS Command Injection) high ranking shows that, despite years of awareness of SQL injection and Command Injection, these traditional attack vectors remain highly effective and actively exploited in the wild.

With a clear trend towards exploiting complex, multi-layered vulnerabilities that bypass traditional security controls, it’s time to shift security strategies towards more robust, multi-layered architectures that can defend against complex, chained attack patterns.

Operational Impact of the Top 10 KEVs: What Security Teams Can Do

Based on the patterns of attack, there is a clear need for security teams to enhance client-side security measures and implement robust input validation across all application layers. Additional measures include:

Review and strengthen SQL query handling and command execution processes to prevent injection attacks.
Tune web application firewalls (WAFs) and intrusion detection systems (IDSs) to detect and block sophisticated encoding and input manipulation techniques.

What it Means: Threat Actors are Adapting Their Tactics

In addition to the top patterns highlighted above, there’s also a clear trend towards exploitation of validation flaws and command injection vulnerabilities. This progression indicates that attackers are chaining multiple techniques to achieve their objectives. For instance, they could start by exploiting client-side vulnerabilities before using sophisticated input manipulation techniques to bypass filters, finally executing malicious commands on the target system.

The presence of multiple encoding-related attack patterns (CAPEC-79 Using Slashes in Alternate Encoding, CAPEC-78 Using Escaped Slashes in Alternate Encoding, CAPEC-64 Using Slashes and URL Encoding Combined to Bypass Validation Logic) in the top 10 highlights attackers’ increasing sophistication in bypassing input validation and security filters. This trend suggests an arms race between attackers developing new evasion techniques and defenders looking for new ways to create more comprehensive input validation mechanisms.

The Strategic Implications for 2025

The top attack patterns for 2024 underline a clear need for a shift towards more robust, multi-layered security architectures that can defend against complex, chained attack patterns. The evolution in attack patterns over the past year reflects a broader trend of threat actors adapting their tactics to exploit gaps in modern application architectures and security systems. The focus on manipulating inputs and leveraging trust relationships aligns with the attackers’ strategic objective of gaining unauthorized access to systems and data, while evading detection.