CWE-1329: Reliance on Component That is Not UpdateableWeakness ID: 1329 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. |
Description The product contains a component that cannot be updated or patched in order to remove vulnerabilities or significant bugs. Extended Description If the component is discovered to contain a vulnerability or critical bug, but the issue cannot be fixed using an update or patch, then the product's owner will not be able to protect against the issue. The only option might be replacement of the product, which could be too financially or operationally expensive for the product owner. As a result, the inability to patch or update can leave the product open to attacker exploitation or critical operation failures. This weakness can be especially difficult to manage when using ROM, firmware, or similar components that traditionally have had limited or no update capabilities. In industries such as healthcare, "legacy" devices can be operated for decades. As a US task force report [REF-1197] notes, "the inability to update or replace equipment has both large and small health care delivery organizations struggle with numerous unsupported legacy systems that cannot easily be replaced (hardware, software, and operating systems) with large numbers of vulnerabilities and few modern countermeasures." While hardware can be prone to this weakness, software systems can also be affected, such as when a third-party driver or library is no longer actively maintained or supported but is still critical for the required functionality. Common Consequences This 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.Scope | Impact | Likelihood |
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Confidentiality Integrity Access Control Authentication Authorization Other
| Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; Quality Degradation; Reduce Maintainability If an attacker can identify an exploitable vulnerability in one product that has no means of patching, the attack may be used against all affected versions of that product. | |
Potential Mitigations
Phase: Requirements Specify requirements that each component should be updateable, including ROM, firmware, etc. |
Phase: Architecture and Design Design the product to allow for updating of its components. Include the external infrastructure that might be necessary to support updates, such as distribution servers. |
Phases: Architecture and Design; Implementation With hardware, support patches that can be programmed in-field or during manufacturing through hardware fuses. This feature can be used for limited patching of devices after shipping, or for the next batch of silicon devices manufactured, without changing the full device ROM. Note:
Some parts of the hardware initialization or signature verification done to authenticate patches will always be "not patchable." Hardware-fuse-based patches will also have limitations in terms of size and the number of patches that can be supported.
|
Phase: Implementation Implement the necessary functionality to allow each component to be updated. |
Relationships This 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) Nature | Type | ID | Name |
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ChildOf | Pillar - a weakness that is the most abstract type of weakness and represents a theme for all class/base/variant weaknesses related to it. A Pillar is different from a Category as a Pillar is still technically a type of weakness that describes a mistake, while a Category represents a common characteristic used to group related things. | 664 | Improper Control of a Resource Through its Lifetime | ChildOf | Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource. | 1357 | Reliance on Insufficiently Trustworthy Component | ParentOf | Base - 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. | 1277 | Firmware Not Updateable | ParentOf | Base - 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. | 1310 | Missing Ability to Patch ROM Code |
This 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) Nature | Type | ID | Name |
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MemberOf | Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. | 1208 | Cross-Cutting Problems |
Modes Of Introduction The 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.Phase | Note |
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Requirements | Requirements development might not consider the importance of updates over the lifetime of the product or might intentionally exclude this capability due to concerns such as expense or speed to market. | Architecture and Design | Lack of planning during architecture development and design, or external pressures such as speed to market, could ignore the capability to update. | Architecture and Design | Designers might omit capabilities for updating a component due to time pressures to release the product or assumptions about the stability of the component. | Implementation | The weakness can appear through oversight during implementation. |
Demonstrative Examples Example 1 A refrigerator has an Internet interface for the official purpose of alerting the manufacturer when that refrigerator detects a fault. Because the device is attached to the Internet, the refrigerator is a target for hackers who may wish to use the device other potentially more nefarious purposes. (bad code) Example Language: Other The refrigerator has no means of patching and is hacked becoming a spewer of email spam. (good code) Example Language: Other The device automatically patches itself and provides considerable more protection against being hacked. Example 2
A System-on-Chip (SOC) implements a Root-of-Trust (RoT) in ROM to boot secure code. However, at times this ROM code might have security vulnerabilities and need to be patched. Since ROM is immutable, it can be impossible to patch.
ROM does not have built-in application-programming interfaces (APIs) to patch if the code is vulnerable. Implement mechanisms to patch the vulnerable ROM code. Example 3 The example code is taken from the JTAG module of the buggy OpenPiton SoC of HACK@DAC'21. JTAG is protected with a password checker. Access to JTAG operations will be denied unless the correct password is provided by the user. This user-provided password is first sent to the HMAC module where it is hashed with a secret crypto key. This user password hash (pass_hash) is then compared with the hash of the correct password (exp_hash). If they match, JTAG will then be unlocked. (bad code) Example Language: Verilog
module dmi_jtag(...)(...);
...
PassChkValid: begin
if(hashValid) begin
if(exp_hash == pass_hash) begin
pass_check = 1'b1;
end else begin
pass_check = 1'b0;
end
state_d = Idle;
end else begin
state_d = PassChkValid;
end
end
...
hmac hmac(
...
.key_i(256'h24e6fa2254c2ff632a41b...),
...
);
...
endmodule
However, the SoC's crypto key is hardcoded into the design and cannot be updated [REF-1387]. Therefore, if the key is leaked somehow, there is no way to reprovision the key without having the device replaced. To fix this issue, a local register should be used (hmac_key_reg) to store the crypto key. If designers need to update the key, they can upload the new key through an input port (hmac_key_i) to the local register by enabling the patching signal (hmac_patch_en) [REF-1388]. (good code) Example Language: Verilog
module dmi_jtag(...
) (
input logic [255:0] hmac_key_i,
input logic hmac_patch_en,
...
reg [255:0] hmac_key_reg;
...
);
...
always_ff @(posedge tck_i or negedge trst_ni) begin
...
if (hmac_patch_en)
hmac_key_reg <= hmac_key_i;
...
end
...
hmac hmac(
...
.key_i(hmac_key_reg),
...
);
...
endmodule
Observed Examples Reference | Description |
| Chain: network-attached storage (NAS) device has a critical OS command injection ( CWE-78) vulnerability that is actively exploited to place IoT devices into a botnet, but some products are "end-of-support" and cannot be patched ( CWE-1277). [ REF-1097] |
Weakness Ordinalities Ordinality | Description |
Primary | (where the weakness exists independent of other weaknesses) |
Detection Methods
Architecture or Design Review Check the consumer or maintainer documentation, the architecture/design documentation, or the original requirements to ensure that the documentation includes details for how to update the firmware. |
Memberships This 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. 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. |
References Content History Submissions |
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Submission Date | Submitter | Organization |
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2020-12-03 (CWE 4.3, 2020-12-10) | CWE Content Team | MITRE | | Contributions |
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Contribution Date | Contributor | Organization |
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2023-06-21 | Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Jeyavijayan Rajendran | Texas A&M University | suggested demonstrative example | 2023-06-21 | Shaza Zeitouni, Mohamadreza Rostami, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi | Technical University of Darmstadt | suggested demonstrative example | Modifications |
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Modification Date | Modifier | Organization |
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2021-07-20 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Demonstrative_Examples, Description, References | 2022-04-28 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Common_Consequences, Description, Detection_Factors, Maintenance_Notes, Modes_of_Introduction, Observed_Examples, Potential_Mitigations, References, Relationships, Time_of_Introduction, Weakness_Ordinalities | 2023-01-31 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Applicable_Platforms, Relationships | 2023-04-27 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Relationships | 2023-06-29 | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Mapping_Notes | 2024-02-29 (CWE 4.14, 2024-02-29) | CWE Content Team | MITRE | updated Demonstrative_Examples, References |
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