CWE-1300 – Improper Protection of Physical Side Channels

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Description

The device does not contain sufficient protection
mechanisms to prevent physical side channels from exposing
sensitive information due to patterns in physically observable
phenomena such as variations in power consumption,
electromagnetic emissions (EME), or acoustic emissions.

Modes of Introduction:

– Implementation

 

 

Related Weaknesses

CWE-203
CWE-203

 

Consequences

Confidentiality: Read Memory, Read Application Data

 

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Description: 

Apply blinding or masking techniques to implementations of cryptographic algorithms.

Phase: Implementation

Description: 

Add shielding or tamper-resistant protections to the device to increase the difficulty of obtaining measurements of the side-channel.

CVE References

  • CVE-2021-3011
    • electromagnetic-wave side-channel in security-related microcontrollers allows extraction of private key
  • CVE-2013-4576
    • message encryption software uses certain instruction sequences that allows RSA key extraction using a chosen-ciphertext attack and acoustic cryptanalysis
  • CVE-2020-28368
    • virtualization product allows recovery of AES keys from the guest OS using a side channel attack against a power/energy monitoring interface.
  • CVE-2019-18673
    • power consumption varies based on number of pixels being illuminated in a display, allowing reading of secrets such as the PIN by using the USB interface to measure power consumption