CWE-1296 — Incorrect Chaining or Granularity of Debug Components
CWE-1296: Incorrect Chaining or Granularity of Debug Components
MITRE CWE weakness
| Kind | Weakness |
| Abstraction | Base |
| Status | Incomplete |
| Likelihood of exploit | — |
Description
The product's debug components contain incorrect chaining or granularity of debug components.
For debugging and troubleshooting a chip, several hardware design elements are often implemented, including: Various Test Access Ports (TAPs) allow boundary scan commands to be executed. For scanning the internal components of a chip, there are scan cells that allow the chip to be used as a "stimulus and response" mechanism. Chipmakers might create custom methods to observe the internal components of their chips by placing various tracing hubs within their chip and creating hierarchical or interconnected structures among those hubs. Logic errors during design or synthesis could misconfigure the interconnection of the debug components, which could allow unintended access permissions.
Common consequences
- Confidentiality, Integrity, Access Control, Authentication, Authorization, Availability, Accountability: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity, Bypass Protection Mechanism, Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands, Modify Memory, Modify Files or Directories
Mitigations
Implementation — Ensure that debug components are properly chained and their granularity is maintained at different authentication levels.
References
- CWE page: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/1296.html
- CWE list: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/index.html