CWE-1250: Improper Preservation of Consistency Between Independent Representations of Shared State
Weakness ID: 1250
Vulnerability Mapping:
ALLOWEDThis CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities Abstraction: BaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
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Description
The product has or supports multiple distributed components or sub-systems that are each required to keep their own local copy of shared data - such as state or cache - but the product does not ensure that all local copies remain consistent with each other.
Extended Description
In highly distributed environments, or on systems with distinct physical components that operate independently, there is often a need for each component to store and update its own local copy of key data such as state or cache, so that all components have the same "view" of the overall system and operate in a coordinated fashion. For example, users of a social media service or a massively multiplayer online game might be using their own personal computers while also interacting with different physical hosts in a globally distributed service, but all participants must be able to have the same "view" of the world. Alternately, a processor's Memory Management Unit (MMU) might have "shadow" MMUs to distribute its workload, and all shadow MMUs are expected to have the same accessible ranges of memory.
In such environments, it becomes critical for the product to ensure that this "shared state" is consistently modified across all distributed systems. If state is not consistently maintained across all systems, then critical transactions might take place out of order, or some users might not get the same data as other users. When this inconsistency affects correctness of operations, it can introduce vulnerabilities in mechanisms that depend on consistent state.
Relationships
This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
Pillar - a weakness that is the most abstract type of weakness and represents a theme for all class/base/variant weaknesses related to it. A Pillar is different from a Category as a Pillar is still technically a type of weakness that describes a mistake, while a Category represents a common characteristic used to group related things.
Base - a weakness
that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
Base - a weakness
that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
Relevant to the view "Hardware Design" (CWE-1194)
Nature
Type
ID
Name
MemberOf
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.
This listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.
Languages
Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)
Operating Systems
Class: Not OS-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)
Architectures
Class: Not Architecture-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)
Technologies
Class: Cloud Computing (Undetermined Prevalence)
Security Hardware (Undetermined Prevalence)
Demonstrative Examples
Example 1
Suppose a processor's Memory Management Unit (MMU) has 5 other shadow MMUs to distribute its workload for its various cores. Each MMU has the start address and end address of "accessible" memory. Any time this accessible range changes (as per the processor's boot status), the main MMU sends an update message to all the shadow MMUs.
Suppose the interconnect fabric does not prioritize such "update" packets over other general traffic packets. This introduces a race condition. If an attacker can flood the target with enough messages so that some of those attack packets reach the target before the new access ranges gets updated, then the attacker can leverage this scenario.
Memberships
This MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources.
Nature
Type
ID
Name
MemberOf
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.
(this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)
Reason: Acceptable-Use
Rationale:
This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Comments:
Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.
Notes
Research Gap
Issues related to state and cache - creation,
preservation, and update - are a significant gap in
CWE that is expected to be addressed in future
versions. It likely has relationships to concurrency
and synchronization, incorrect behavior order, and
other areas that already have some coverage in CWE,
although the focus has typically been on independent
processes on the same operating system - not on
independent systems that are all a part of a larger
system-of-systems.
References
[REF-1069] Tanakorn Leesatapornwongsa, Jeffrey F. Lukman, Shan Lu
and Haryadi S. Gunawi. "TaxDC: A Taxonomy of Non-Deterministic Concurrency Bugs
in Datacenter Distributed Systems". 2016.
<https://ucare.cs.uchicago.edu/pdf/asplos16-TaxDC.pdf>.
Content History
Submissions
Submission Date
Submitter
Organization
2020-02-13 (CWE 4.0, 2020-02-24)
CWE Content Team
MITRE
Modifications
Modification Date
Modifier
Organization
2020-06-25
CWE Content Team
MITRE
updated Applicable_Platforms
2022-04-28
CWE Content Team
MITRE
updated Applicable_Platforms
2022-06-28
CWE Content Team
MITRE
updated Applicable_Platforms
2023-01-31
CWE Content Team
MITRE
updated Relationships
2023-04-27
CWE Content Team
MITRE
updated Relationships
2023-06-29
CWE Content Team
MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
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