Description
The developer builds a security-critical protection mechanism into the software, but the processor optimizes the execution of the program such that the mechanism is removed or modified.
Modes of Introduction:
– Architecture and Design
Likelihood of Exploit: Low
Related Weaknesses
CWE-1038
Consequences
Integrity: Bypass Protection Mechanism
A successful exploitation of this weakness will change the order of an application’s execution and will likely be used to bypass specific protection mechanisms. This bypass can be exploited further to potentially read data that should otherwise be unaccessible.
Potential Mitigations
CVE References
- CVE-2017-5715
- Intel, ARM, and AMD processor optimizations related to speculative execution and branch prediction cause access control checks to be bypassed when placing data into the cache. Often known as “Spectre”.
- CVE-2017-5753
- Intel, ARM, and AMD processor optimizations related to speculative execution and branch prediction cause access control checks to be bypassed when placing data into the cache. Often known as “Spectre”.
- CVE-2017-5754
- Intel processor optimizations related to speculative execution cause access control checks to be bypassed when placing data into the cache. Often known as “Meltdown”.
