Tampering

Tampering is the act of changing something in a malicious way. In relation to information security, the goal of tampering is usually to cause one of the following:

• Denial of service: tampering with the resource to make it unusable.
• Elevation of privilege: tampering with a resource to gain additional privileges.

Tampering can be hard to avoid, so a common countermeasure is to make it obvious when something has been tampered with. A common example, outside of information security, is drug packaging. Most over-the-counter drugs are packaged with tamper-proof seals. These make it obvious to the consumer if the product has been tampered with because the tamper-proof seal has been broken.

Let’s first look at some of the cluster components that can be tampered with.