CWE-1190

Base Abstraction Level
Pillar — Highest-level weakness category
Class — Abstract, language-independent
Base — Specific enough to detect
Variant — Tied to specific technology
Compound — Requires multiple weaknesses Draft MITRE CWE Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development, may change
Incomplete — Partially defined by MITRE
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CWE
DMA Device Enabled Too Early in Boot Phase

Description

The product enables a Direct Memory Access (DMA) capable device before the security configuration settings are established, which allows an attacker to extract data from or gain privileges on the product.

DMA is included in a number of devices because it allows data transfer between the computer and the connected device, using direct hardware access to read or write directly to main memory without any OS interaction. An attacker could exploit this to access secrets. Several virtualization-based mitigations have been introduced to thwart DMA attacks. These are usually configured/setup during boot time. However, certain IPs that are powered up before boot is complete (known as early boot IPs) may be DMA capable. Such IPs, if not trusted, could launch DMA attacks and gain access to assets that should otherwise be protected.

Consequences

Access Control — Bypass Protection Mechanism, Modify Memory

DMA devices have direct write access to main memory and due to time of attack will be able to bypass OS or Bootloader access control.

Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Utilize an IOMMU to orchestrate IO access from the start of the boot process.