Book a Security Review

Weakness · High

CWE-1270: Generation of Incorrect Security Tokens

What it is

The product implements a Security Token mechanism to differentiate what actions are allowed or disallowed when a transaction originates from an entity. However, the Security Tokens generated in the system are incorrect.

MITRE CWE 4.19.1

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

Systems-On-a-Chip (SoC) (Integrated circuits and hardware engines) implement Security Tokens to differentiate and identify actions originated from various agents. These actions could be "read", "write", "program", "reset", "fetch", "compute", etc. Security Tokens are generated and assigned to every agent on the SoC that is either capable of generating an action or receiving an action from another agent. Every agent could be assigned a unique, Security Token based on its trust level or privileges.

What an attacker can do

  • Modify Files or Directories (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
  • Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
  • Bypass Protection Mechanism (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
  • Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
  • Read Memory (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
  • Modify Memory (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)
  • DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control)

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design

  • Generation of Security Tokens should be reviewed for design inconsistency and common weaknesses. Security-Token definition and programming flow should be tested in pre-silicon and post-silicon testing.

CWE-1270 on MITRE's CWE site

H2 Security

Found it in your code?

We review where it appears, fix it with your team, and check it was not already used against you.

Talk to our team

T Academy

Stop writing it in the first place

Learn to build software and systems without weaknesses like this one, with practice on real hosts in your browser, every objective checked on the machine.

Start free

Source: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.