CAPEC-680

Detailed Abstraction Level
Meta — Very abstract, high-level category
Standard — Specific enough to understand
Detailed — Tied to specific technique Draft MITRE CAPEC Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development
Incomplete — Partially defined
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CAPEC Likelihood: Medium Severity: High
Exploitation of Improperly Controlled Registers

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.

Prerequisites

Awareness of the hardware being leveraged.

Access to the hardware being leveraged.

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.

Skills Required

[High] Intricate knowledge of registers.