CWE-1279

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 Incomplete 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
Cryptographic Operations are run Before Supporting Units are Ready

Description

Performing cryptographic operations without ensuring that the supporting inputs are ready to supply valid data may compromise the cryptographic result.

Many cryptographic hardware units depend upon other hardware units to supply information to them to produce a securely encrypted result. For example, a cryptographic unit that depends on an external random-number-generator (RNG) unit for entropy must wait until the RNG unit is producing random numbers. If a cryptographic unit retrieves a private encryption key from a fuse unit, the fuse unit must be up and running before a key may be supplied.

Consequences

Access Control, Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Accountability, Authentication, Authorization, Non-Repudiation — Varies by Context

Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Best practices should be used to design cryptographic systems.

Phase: Implementation

Continuously ensuring that cryptographic inputs are supplying valid information is necessary to ensure that the encrypted output is secure.