CWE-1310: Missing Ability to Patch ROM Code

Description

Missing an ability to patch ROM code may leave a System or System-on-Chip (SoC) in a vulnerable state.

Submission Date :

April 25, 2020, midnight

Modification Date :

2023-06-29 00:00:00+00:00

Organization :

Intel Corporation

Extended Description

A System or System-on-Chip (SoC) that implements a boot process utilizing security mechanisms such as Root-of-Trust (RoT) typically starts by executing code from a Read-only-Memory (ROM) component. The code in ROM is immutable, hence any security vulnerabilities discovered in the ROM code can never be fixed for the systems that are already in use.

A common weakness is that the ROM does not have the ability to patch if security vulnerabilities are uncovered after the system gets shipped. This leaves the system in a vulnerable state where an adversary can compromise the SoC.

Example Vulnerable Codes

Example - 1

A System-on-Chip (SOC) implements a Root-of-Trust (RoT) in ROM to boot secure code. However, at times this ROM code might have security vulnerabilities and need to be patched. Since ROM is immutable, it can be impossible to patch.

ROM does not have built-in application-programming interfaces (APIs) to patch if the code is vulnerable. Implement mechanisms to patch the vulnerable ROM code.

Related Weaknesses

This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined to give an overview of the different insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction.

CWE-1329: Reliance on Component That is Not Updateable

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