CWEweakness

CWE-1271 Uninitialized Value on Reset for Registers Holding Security Settings

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Abstraction
Base
Structure
Simple
Status
Incomplete
Languages
Not Language-Specific
CWE version
5.0

Description

Security-critical logic is not set to a known value on reset.

Common consequences

• Access Control, Authentication, Authorization: Varies by Context — When the device is first brought out of reset, the state of registers will be indeterminate if they have not been initialized by the logic. Before the registers are initialized, there will be a window during which the device is in an insecure state and may be vulnerable to attack.

Potential mitigations

• [Implementation] Design checks should be performed to identify any uninitialized flip-flops used for security-critical functions. • [Architecture and Design] All registers holding security-critical information should be set to a specific value on reset.

Related

Attack pattern · CAPEC (1)

  • CAPEC-74 Manipulating State attack pattern

Child of · CWE (1)

  • CWE-909 Missing Initialization of Resource weakness

Referenced by CAPEC · weakness (1)

  • CAPEC-74 Manipulating State attack pattern

Referenced by CWE · peer of (1)

  • CWE-1304 Improperly Preserved Integrity of Hardware Configuration State During a Power Save/Restore Operation weakness