BaseIncomplete

CWE-1259Improper Restriction of Security Token Assignment

Category: auth

Description

The System-On-A-Chip (SoC) implements a Security Token mechanism to differentiate what actions are allowed or disallowed when a transaction originates from an entity. However, the Security Tokens are improperly protected. Systems-On-A-Chip (Integrated circuits and hardware engines) implement Security Tokens to differentiate and identify which actions originated from which agent. These actions may be one of the directives: 'read', 'write', 'program', 'reset', 'fetch', 'compute', etc. Security Tokens are assigned to every agent in the System that is capable of generating an action or receiving an action from another agent. Multiple Security Tokens may be assigned to an agent and may be unique based on the agent's trust level or allowed privileges. Since the Security Tokens are integral for the maintenance of security in an SoC, they need to be protected properly. A common weakness afflicting Security Tokens is improperly restricting the assignment to trusted components.

Common consequences· 1

  • Confidentiality / Integrity / Availability / Access Control — Modify Files or Directories, Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands, Bypass Protection Mechanism, Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Modify Memory, Modify Memory, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart
    An improperly protected Security Token may be able to be programmed by a malicious agent (i.e., the Security Token is mutable) to spoof the action as if it originated from a trusted agent.

Potential mitigations· 1

  • [Architecture and Design, Implementation]

Related CAPEC attack patterns· 2

CAPEC-121CAPEC-681

References

  1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/1259.html

Exploits (incoming)2

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
AttackPatternExploit Non-Production Interfacescapec-121100%live
AttackPatternExploitation of Improperly Controlled Hardware Security Identifierscapec-681100%live

Related by meaning· 6

Nearest entities by semantic similarity across the cs-graph corpus.

CWE
Insecure Security Identifier Mechanism
CWE
Improper Isolation of Shared Resources on System-on-a-Chip (SoC)
CWE
Missing Source Identifier in Entity Transactions on a System-On-Chip (SOC)
CWE
Improper Management of Sensitive Trace Data
CWE
Improper Identifier for IP Block used in System-On-Chip (SOC)
CWE
Missing Support for Security Features in On-chip Fabrics or Buses
Sourced from MITRE CWE 4.20. Curated for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.