CWE-1190 DMA Device Enabled Too Early in Boot Phase

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.

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.

• Access Control: Bypass Protection Mechanism, Modify Memory — An attacker could exploit this to access secrets. 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.

• [Architecture and Design] Utilize an IOMMU to orchestrate IO access from the start of the boot process.