The product has or supports multiple distributed components or sub-systems that are each required to keep their own local copy of shared data - such as state or cache - but the product does not ensure that all local copies remain consistent with each other.

In highly distributed environments, or on systems with distinct physical components that operate independently, there is often a need for each component to store and update its own local copy of key data such as state or cache, so that all components have the same "view" of the overall system and operate in a coordinated fashion. For example, users of a social media service or a massively multiplayer online game might be using their own personal computers while also interacting with different physical hosts in a globally distributed service, but all participants must be able to have the same "view" of the world. Alternately, a processor's Memory Management Unit (MMU) might have "shadow" MMUs to distribute its workload, and all shadow MMUs are expected to have the same accessible ranges of memory.

In such environments, it becomes critical for the product to ensure that this "shared state" is consistently modified across all distributed systems. If state is not consistently maintained across all systems, then critical transactions might take place out of order, or some users might not get the same data as other users. When this inconsistency affects correctness of operations, it can introduce vulnerabilities in mechanisms that depend on consistent state.

Applicable Platforms

Language

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined)

Operating Systems

Class: Not OS-Specific (Undetermined)

Architectures

Class: Not Architecture-Specific (Undetermined)

Technologies

Class: Cloud Computing (Undetermined)
Name: Security Hardware (Undetermined)

Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Rationale : This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Comments : Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

Notes

Issues related to state and cache - creation, preservation, and update - are a significant gap in CWE that is expected to be addressed in future versions. It likely has relationships to concurrency and synchronization, incorrect behavior order, and other areas that already have some coverage in CWE, although the focus has typically been on independent processes on the same operating system - not on independent systems that are all a part of a larger system-of-systems.

References

REF-1069

TaxDC: A Taxonomy of Non-Deterministic Concurrency Bugs in Datacenter Distributed Systems
Tanakorn Leesatapornwongsa, Jeffrey F. Lukman, Shan Lu, Haryadi S. Gunawi.
https://ucare.cs.uchicago.edu/pdf/asplos16-TaxDC.pdf

Submission

Modifications