CWE-1331 Detail

CWE-1331

Improper Isolation of Shared Resources in Network On Chip (NoC)
Stable
2020-12-10
00h00 +00:00
2023-10-26
00h00 +00:00
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Name: Improper Isolation of Shared Resources in Network On Chip (NoC)

The Network On Chip (NoC) does not isolate or incorrectly isolates its on-chip-fabric and internal resources such that they are shared between trusted and untrusted agents, creating timing channels.

CWE Description

Typically, network on chips (NoC) have many internal resources that are shared between packets from different trust domains. These resources include internal buffers, crossbars and switches, individual ports, and channels. The sharing of resources causes contention and introduces interference between differently trusted domains, which poses a security threat via a timing channel, allowing attackers to infer data that belongs to a trusted agent. This may also result in introducing network interference, resulting in degraded throughput and latency.

General Informations

Background Details

"Network-on-chip" (NoC) is a commonly-used term used for hardware interconnect fabrics used by multicore Systems-on-Chip (SoC). Communication between modules on the chip uses packet-based methods, with improved efficiency and scalability compared to bus architectures [REF-1241].


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

Name: Security Hardware (Undetermined)
Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined)

Common Consequences

Scope Impact Likelihood
Confidentiality
Availability		DoS: Resource Consumption (Other), Varies by Context, Other

Note: Attackers may infer data that belongs to a trusted agent. The methods used to perform this attack may result in noticeably increased resource consumption.		Medium

Observed Examples

References Description

CVE-2021-33096

Improper isolation of shared resource in a network-on-chip leads to denial of service

Potential Mitigations

Phases : Architecture and Design // Implementation
Implement priority-based arbitration inside the NoC and have dedicated buffers or virtual channels for routing secret data from trusted agents.

Detection Methods

Manual Analysis

Providing marker flags to send through the interfaces coupled with examination of which users are able to read or manipulate the flags will help verify that the proper isolation has been achieved and is effective.
Effectiveness : Moderate

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-124 Shared Resource Manipulation
An adversary exploits a resource shared between multiple applications, an application pool or hardware pin multiplexing to affect behavior. Resources may be shared between multiple applications or between multiple threads of a single application. Resource sharing is usually accomplished through mutual access to a single memory location or multiplexed hardware pins. If an adversary can manipulate this shared resource (usually by co-opting one of the applications or threads) the other applications or threads using the shared resource will often continue to trust the validity of the compromised shared resource and use it in their calculations. This can result in invalid trust assumptions, corruption of additional data through the normal operations of the other users of the shared resource, or even cause a crash or compromise of the sharing applications.

References

REF-1155

SurfNoC: A Low Latency and Provably Non-Interfering Approach to Secure Networks-On-Chip
Hassan M. G. Wassel, Ying Gao, Jason K. Oberg, Tedd Huffmire, Ryan Kastner, Frederic T. Chong, Timothy Sherwood.
http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~kastner/papers/isca13-surfNOC.pdf

REF-1241

Network on a chip
Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_on_a_chip

REF-1242

A Survey of Network-on-Chip Security Attacks and Countermeasures
Subodha Charles, Prabhat Mishra.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3450964

REF-1245

Design of Secure and Trustworthy Network-on-chip Architectures
Subodha Charles.
https://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/cad/Publications/charlesThesis.pdf

Submission

Name Organization Date Date release Version
Arun Kanuparthi, Hareesh Khattri, Parbati K. Manna Intel Corporation 2020-05-23 +00:00 2020-12-10 +00:00 4.3

Modifications

Name Organization Date Comment
CWE Content Team MITRE 2021-10-28 +00:00 updated Background_Details, Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Detection_Factors, Name, References, Relationships, Weakness_Ordinalities
CWE Content Team MITRE 2022-04-28 +00:00 updated Applicable_Platforms, References
CWE Content Team MITRE 2022-06-28 +00:00 updated Applicable_Platforms
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-04-27 +00:00 updated Relationships
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-06-29 +00:00 updated Mapping_Notes
CWE Content Team MITRE 2023-10-26 +00:00 updated Observed_Examples