CWE-1323 Detail

CWE-1323

Improper Management of Sensitive Trace Data
Draft
2020-12-10
00h00 +00:00
2023-06-29
00h00 +00:00
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Name: Improper Management of Sensitive Trace Data

Trace data collected from several sources on the System-on-Chip (SoC) is stored in unprotected locations or transported to untrusted agents.

CWE Description

To facilitate verification of complex System-on-Chip (SoC) designs, SoC integrators add specific IP blocks that trace the SoC's internal signals in real-time. This infrastructure enables observability of the SoC's internal behavior, validation of its functional design, and detection of hardware and software bugs. Such tracing IP blocks collect traces from several sources on the SoC including the CPU, crypto coprocessors, and on-chip fabrics. Traces collected from these sources are then aggregated inside trace IP block and forwarded to trace sinks, such as debug-trace ports that facilitate debugging by external hardware and software debuggers.

Since these traces are collected from several security-sensitive sources, they must be protected against untrusted debuggers. If they are stored in unprotected memory, an untrusted software debugger can access these traces and extract secret information. Additionally, if security-sensitive traces are not tagged as secure, an untrusted hardware debugger might access them to extract confidential information.

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: System on Chip (Undetermined)

Common Consequences

Scope Impact Likelihood
ConfidentialityRead Memory

Note: An adversary can read secret values if they are captured in debug traces and stored unsafely.

Potential Mitigations

Phases : Implementation
Tag traces to indicate owner and debugging privilege level (designer, OEM, or end user) needed to access that trace.

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-150 Collect Data from Common Resource Locations
An adversary exploits well-known locations for resources for the purposes of undermining the security of the target. In many, if not most systems, files and resources are organized in a default tree structure. This can be useful for adversaries because they often know where to look for resources or files that are necessary for attacks. Even when the precise location of a targeted resource may not be known, naming conventions may indicate a small area of the target machine's file tree where the resources are typically located. For example, configuration files are normally stored in the /etc director on Unix systems. Adversaries can take advantage of this to commit other types of attacks.
CAPEC-167 White Box Reverse Engineering
An attacker discovers the structure, function, and composition of a type of computer software through white box analysis techniques. White box techniques involve methods which can be applied to a piece of software when an executable or some other compiled object can be directly subjected to analysis, revealing at least a portion of its machine instructions that can be observed upon execution.
CAPEC-545 Pull Data from System Resources
An adversary who is authorized or has the ability to search known system resources, does so with the intention of gathering useful information. System resources include files, memory, and other aspects of the target system. In this pattern of attack, the adversary does not necessarily know what they are going to find when they start pulling data. This is different than CAPEC-150 where the adversary knows what they are looking for due to the common location.

References

REF-1150

Secure design-for-debug for Systems-on-Chip
Jerry Backer, David Hely, Ramesh Karri.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7342418

REF-1151

Secure and Flexible Trace-Based Debugging of Systems-on-Chip
Jerry Backer, David Hely, Ramesh Karri.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2994601

Submission

Name Organization Date Date release Version
Hareesh Khattri, Parbati K. Manna, and Arun Kanuparthi Intel Corporation 2020-07-20 +00:00 2020-12-10 +00:00 4.3

Modifications

Name Organization Date Comment
CWE Content Team MITRE 2021-10-28 +00:00 updated Common_Consequences
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-04-27 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-06-29 +00:00 updated Mapping_Notes