CWE

Common Weakness Enumeration

A community-developed list of SW & HW weaknesses that can become vulnerabilities

New to CWE? click here!
CWE Most Important Hardware Weaknesses
CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Weaknesses
Home > CWE List > CWE- Individual Dictionary Definition (4.15)  
ID

CWE-1303: Non-Transparent Sharing of Microarchitectural Resources

Weakness ID: 1303
Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWEDThis CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
Abstraction: BaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
View customized information:
For users who are interested in more notional aspects of a weakness. Example: educators, technical writers, and project/program managers. For users who are concerned with the practical application and details about the nature of a weakness and how to prevent it from happening. Example: tool developers, security researchers, pen-testers, incident response analysts. For users who are mapping an issue to CWE/CAPEC IDs, i.e., finding the most appropriate CWE for a specific issue (e.g., a CVE record). Example: tool developers, security researchers. For users who wish to see all available information for the CWE/CAPEC entry. For users who want to customize what details are displayed.
×

Edit Custom Filter


+ Description
Hardware structures shared across execution contexts (e.g., caches and branch predictors) can violate the expected architecture isolation between contexts.
+ Extended Description

Modern processors use techniques such as out-of-order execution, speculation, prefetching, data forwarding, and caching to increase performance. Details about the implementation of these techniques are hidden from the programmer's view. This is problematic when the hardware implementation of these techniques results in resources being shared across supposedly isolated contexts. Contention for shared resources between different contexts opens covert channels that allow malicious programs executing in one context to recover information from another context.

Some examples of shared micro-architectural resources that have been used to leak information between contexts are caches, branch prediction logic, and load or store buffers. Speculative and out-of-order execution provides an attacker with increased control over which data is leaked through the covert channel.

If the extent of resource sharing between contexts in the design microarchitecture is undocumented, it is extremely difficult to ensure system assets are protected against disclosure.

+ Common Consequences
Section HelpThis table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
ScopeImpactLikelihood
Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Read Application Data; Read Memory

Microarchitectural side-channels have been used to leak specific information such as cryptographic keys, and Address Space Layout Randomization (ALSR) offsets as well as arbitrary memory.
+ Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Microarchitectural covert channels can be addressed using a mixture of hardware and software mitigation techniques. These include partitioned caches, new barrier and flush instructions, and disabling high resolution performance counters and timers.

Phase: Requirements

Microarchitectural covert channels can be addressed using a mixture of hardware and software mitigation techniques. These include partitioned caches, new barrier and flush instructions, and disabling high resolution performance counters and timers.
+ Relationships
Section HelpThis table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
+ Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)
NatureTypeIDName
ChildOfBaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.203Observable Discrepancy
ChildOfBaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.1189Improper Isolation of Shared Resources on System-on-a-Chip (SoC)
Section HelpThis table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
+ Relevant to the view "Hardware Design" (CWE-1194)
NatureTypeIDName
MemberOfCategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.1198Privilege Separation and Access Control Issues
+ Modes Of Introduction
Section HelpThe different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.
PhaseNote
Architecture and DesignSuch issues could be introduced during hardware architecture and design and identified later during Testing or System Configuration phases.
ImplementationSuch issues could be introduced during implementation and identified later during Testing or System Configuration phases.
+ Applicable Platforms
Section HelpThis listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.

Languages

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Operating Systems

Class: Not OS-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Architectures

Class: Not Architecture-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Technologies

Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

+ Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

On some processors the hardware indirect branch predictor is shared between execution contexts, for example, between sibling SMT threads. When SMT thread A executes an indirect branch to a target address X, this target may be temporarily stored by the indirect branch predictor. A subsequent indirect branch mis-prediction for SMT thread B could speculatively execute instructions at X (or at a location in B's address space that partially aliases X). Even though the processor rolls back the architectural effects of the mis-predicted indirect branch, the memory accesses alter data cache state, which is not rolled back after the indirect branch is resolved.


+ Memberships
Section HelpThis MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources.
NatureTypeIDName
MemberOfCategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.1364ICS Communications: Zone Boundary Failures
MemberOfCategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.1366ICS Communications: Frail Security in Protocols
MemberOfCategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.1418Comprehensive Categorization: Violation of Secure Design Principles
+ Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Usage: ALLOWED

(this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)

Reason: Acceptable-Use

Rationale:

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.

Comments:

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.
+ Notes

Maintenance

As of CWE 4.9, members of the CWE Hardware SIG are closely analyzing this entry and others to improve CWE's coverage of transient execution weaknesses, which include issues related to Spectre, Meltdown, and other attacks. Additional investigation may include other weaknesses related to microarchitectural state. Finally, this entry's demonstrative example might not be appropriate. As a result, this entry might change significantly in CWE 4.10.
+ References
[REF-1121] Moritz Lipp, Michael Schwarz, Daniel Gruss, Thomas Prescher, Werner Haas, Anders Fogh, Jann Horn, Stegfan Mangard, Paul Kocher, Daniel Genkin, Yuval Yarom and Mike Hamberg. "Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space". 2018-01-03. <https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf>.
[REF-1122] Moritz Lipp, Michael Schwarz, Daniel Gruss, Thomas Prescher, Werner Haas, Anders Fogh, Jann Horn, Stegfan Mangard, Paul Kocher, Daniel Genkin, Yuval Yarom and Mike Hamberg. "Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution". 2018-01-03. <https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf>.
[REF-1123] Dmitry Evtyushkin, Dmitry Ponomarev and Nael Abu-Ghazaleh. "Jump Over ASLR: Attacking Branch Predictors to Bypass ASLR". 2016-10-19. <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7783743/>.
[REF-1124] Qian Ge, Yuval Yarom, David Cock and Gernot Heiser. "A Survey of Microarchitectural Timing Attacks and Countermeasures on Contemporary Hardware". 2016-10-24. <https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/613.pdf>.
+ Content History
+ Submissions
Submission DateSubmitterOrganization
2020-05-08
(CWE 4.2, 2020-08-20)
Nicole FernTortuga Logic
+ Modifications
Modification DateModifierOrganization
2021-03-15CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Related_Attack_Patterns
2022-10-13CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Demonstrative_Examples, Maintenance_Notes
2023-04-27CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Relationships
2023-06-29CWE Content TeamMITRE
updated Mapping_Notes, Relationships
Page Last Updated: July 16, 2024