CWE-1312 Detail

CWE-1312

Missing Protection for Mirrored Regions in On-Chip Fabric Firewall
Draft
2020-12-10
00h00 +00:00
2023-06-29
00h00 +00:00
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Name: Missing Protection for Mirrored Regions in On-Chip Fabric Firewall

The firewall in an on-chip fabric protects the main addressed region, but it does not protect any mirrored memory or memory-mapped-IO (MMIO) regions.

CWE Description

Few fabrics mirror memory and address ranges, where mirrored regions contain copies of the original data. This redundancy is used to achieve fault tolerance. Whatever protections the fabric firewall implements for the original region should also apply to the mirrored regions. If not, an attacker could bypass existing read/write protections by reading from/writing to the mirrored regions to leak or corrupt the original data.

General Informations

Modes Of Introduction

Architecture and Design
Implementation

Applicable Platforms

Language

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined)

Operating Systems

Class: Not OS-Specific (Undetermined)

Architectures

Class: Not Architecture-Specific (Undetermined)

Technologies

Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined)

Common Consequences

Scope Impact Likelihood
Confidentiality
Integrity
Access Control		Modify Memory, Read Memory, Bypass Protection Mechanism

Potential Mitigations

Phases : Architecture and Design
The fabric firewall should apply the same protections as the original region to the mirrored regions.
Phases : Implementation
The fabric firewall should apply the same protections as the original region to the mirrored regions.

Detection Methods

Manual Dynamic Analysis

Using an external debugger, send write transactions to mirrored regions to test if original, write-protected regions are modified. Similarly, send read transactions to mirrored regions to test if the original, read-protected signals can be read.
Effectiveness : High

Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Justification : 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.
Comment : 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.

Related Attack Patterns

CAPEC-ID Attack Pattern Name
CAPEC-456 Infected Memory
An adversary inserts malicious logic into memory enabling them to achieve a negative impact. This logic is often hidden from the user of the system and works behind the scenes to achieve negative impacts. This pattern of attack focuses on systems already fielded and used in operation as opposed to systems that are still under development and part of the supply chain.
CAPEC-679 Exploitation of Improperly Configured or Implemented Memory Protections

An adversary takes advantage of missing or incorrectly configured access control within memory to read/write data or inject malicious code into said memory.

References

REF-1134

Address Range Memory Mirroring
Taku Izumi, Fujitsu Limited.
https://www.fujitsu.com/jp/documents/products/software/os/linux/catalog/LinuxConJapan2016-Izumi.pdf

Submission

Name Organization Date Date release Version
Arun Kanuparthi, Hareesh Khattri, Parbati K. Manna Intel Corporation 2020-06-01 +00:00 2020-12-10 +00:00 4.3

Modifications

Name Organization Date Comment
CWE Content Team MITRE 2021-10-28 +00:00 updated Potential_Mitigations
CWE Content Team MITRE 2022-04-28 +00:00 updated Related_Attack_Patterns
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-01-31 +00:00 updated Related_Attack_Patterns
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-04-27 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-06-29 +00:00 updated Mapping_Notes