Contractors

ASDR Table of Contents

Description
A contractor is one who provides goods or service to customers. The contractor can be a group or individual that has a contracts with another individual or organization to make a project or something specific. The contract agreement between the customer and the contractor can include everything from the responsability for the methods, means, execution and/or supervision to the supplying of all material, labor, equipment and/or services necessary. It includes the budget, the general and special conditions and the plans and specification of the project, service or supplies.

To do this it is common for the general contractor to subcontract part of the work to other persons and companies that specialize in these types of work. These are called subcontractors.

Risk Factors
TBD

Examples
Outsourced software developers are hired to write code to a specification provided by the procuring company. Their deliverable may include source code, but is sometimes only a compiled version of the application.

A malicious developer is one of the most difficult threats to deal with, as it is extremely difficult to identify malicious code. A talented attacker will make attacks look exactly like an inadvertent error for plausible deniability. In addition, malicious code may be obfuscated to prevent easy detection. Some techniques include spreading an attack throughout a software baseline, using inheritance and class loading tricks to hide calls, and even formatting tricks.

An outsourced software developer may have no ties with the procuring company and may see an opportunity to steal information or money via a software attack.

Examples:
 * Java software developer
 * SQL developer
 * Mainframe developer

Related Threat Agents

 * Internal software developer

Related Attacks

 * Logic/time bomb
 * Backdoor attack
 * Salami attack

Related Vulnerabilities
TBD