Weakness · High
CWE-1268: Policy Privileges are not Assigned Consistently Between Control and Data Agents
What it is
The product's hardware-enforced access control for a particular resource improperly accounts for privilege discrepancies between control and write policies.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design, Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
Integrated circuits and hardware engines may provide access to resources (device-configuration, encryption keys, etc.) belonging to trusted firmware or software modules (commonly set by a BIOS or a bootloader). These accesses are typically controlled and limited by the hardware. Hardware design access control is sometimes implemented using a policy. A policy defines which entity or agent may or may not be allowed to perform an action. When a system implements multiple levels of policies, a control policy may allow direct access to a resource as well as changes to the policies themselves. Resources that include agents in their control policy but not in their write policy could unintentionally allow an untrusted agent to insert itself in the write policy register. Inclusion in the write policy register could allow a malicious or misbehaving agent write access to resources. This action could result in security compromises including leaked information, leaked encryption keys, or modification of device configuration.
What an attacker can do
- Modify Memory (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
- Read Memory (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
- DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
- Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
- Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
- Bypass Protection Mechanism (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
- Read Files or Directories (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
- Reduce Reliability (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Access-control-policy definition and programming flow must be sufficiently tested in pre-silicon and post-silicon testing.
H2 Security
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.