CAPEC-680 — Exploitation of Improperly Controlled Registers
CAPEC-680: Exploitation of Improperly Controlled Registers
MITRE CAPEC attack pattern
| Status | Draft |
| Typical severity | High |
| Likelihood of attack | Medium |
| Catalogue | CAPEC 3.9 (2023-01-24) |
Description
An adversary exploits missing or incorrectly configured access control within registers to read/write data that is not meant to be obtained or modified by a user.
Where this sits in the chain
A finding maps to a weakness (CWE), a weakness is exploited by an attack pattern (CAPEC), and an attack pattern shows up in ATT&CK as observed adversary behaviour. This page is the middle hop.
Weaknesses exploited: CWE-1224, CWE-1231, CWE-1233, CWE-1262, CWE-1283
Prerequisites
- Awareness of the hardware being leveraged.
- Access to the hardware being leveraged.
Skills required
- High: Intricate knowledge of registers.
Consequences
- Integrity: Modify Data
- Confidentiality: Read Data
Mitigations
- Design proper access control policies for hardware register access from software and ensure these policies are implemented in accordance with the specified design.
- Ensure security lock bit protections are reviewed for design inconsistencies and common weaknesses.
- Test security lock programming flow in both pre-silicon and post-silicon environments.
- Leverage automated tools to test that values are not reprogrammable and that write-once fields lock on writing zeros.
- Ensure that measurement data is stored in registers that are read-only or otherwise have access controls that prevent modification by an untrusted agent.