Improper Handling of Physical or Environmental Conditions

Opis

The product does not properly handle unexpected physical or environmental conditions that occur naturally or are artificially induced.

Hardware products are typically only guaranteed to behave correctly within certain physical limits or environmental conditions. Such products cannot necessarily control the physical or external conditions to which they are subjected. However, the inability to handle such conditions can undermine a product's security. For example, an unexpected physical or environmental condition may cause the flipping of a bit that is used for an authentication decision. This unexpected condition could occur naturally or be induced artificially by an adversary.

Physical or environmental conditions of concern are:

- **Atmospheric characteristics: ** extreme temperature ranges, etc.

- **Interference: ** electromagnetic interference (EMI), radio frequency interference (RFI), etc.

- **Assorted light sources: ** white light, ultra-violet light (UV), lasers, infrared (IR), etc.

- **Power variances: ** under-voltages, over-voltages, under-current, over-current, etc.

- **Clock variances: ** glitching, overclocking, clock stretching, etc.

- **Component aging and degradation**

- **Materials manipulation: ** focused ion beams (FIB), etc.

- **Exposure to radiation: ** x-rays, cosmic radiation, etc.

Skutki

• Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability

  Varies by Context; Unexpected State

  Consequences of this weakness are highly dependent on the role of affected components within the larger product.

Zapobieganie

• Requirements

  In requirements, be specific about expectations for how the product will perform when it exceeds physical and environmental boundary conditions, e.g., by shutting down.

• Architecture and Design, Implementation

  Where possible, include independent components that can detect excess environmental conditions and have the capability to shut down the product.

• Architecture and Design, Implementation

  Where possible, use shielding or other materials that can increase the adversary's workload and reduce the likelihood of being able to successfully trigger a security-related failure.

Przykłady podatności

• CVE-2019-17391 Lack of anti-glitch protections allows an attacker to launch a physical attack to bypass the secure boot and read protected eFuses.

Słabość nadrzędna

• CWE-703 Improper Check or Handling of Exceptional Conditions

Słabości podrzędne

• CWE-1247 Improper Protection Against Voltage and Clock Glitches
• CWE-1261 Improper Handling of Single Event Upsets
• CWE-1332 Improper Handling of Faults that Lead to Instruction Skips
• CWE-1351 Improper Handling of Hardware Behavior in Exceptionally Cold Environments

Kiedy powstaje

• Architecture and Design — The product's design might not consider checking and handling extreme conditions.
• Manufacturing — For hardware manufacturing, sub-par components might be chosen that are not able to handle the expected environmental conditions.

Dotyczy

System on Chip, ICS/OT

Źródła

1. Categories of Security Vulnerabilities in ICS — Securing Energy Infrastructure Executive Task Force (SEI ETF), ICS Communications / 2. Unreliability, 2022
2. Semi-invasive attacks - A new approach to hardware security analysis — Sergei P. Skorobogatov, 2005
3. Physical Security Attacks Against Silicon Devices — Texas Instruments, 2022
4. On The Susceptibility of Texas Instruments SimpleLink Platform Microcontrollers to Non-Invasive Physical Attacks — Lennert Wouters, Benedikt Gierlichs, Bart Preneel, 1.2, 2022
5. The Hard-coded Key to my Heart - Hacking a Pacemaker Programmer — Anders B. Wilhelmsen, Eivind S. Kristiansen, Marie Moe, 2019