CWE - CWE-1261: Improper Handling of Single Event Upsets (4.16)

Weakness ID: 1261

Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWED This CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities
Abstraction: Base 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.

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Description

The hardware logic does not effectively handle when single-event upsets (SEUs) occur.

Extended Description

Technology trends such as CMOS-transistor down-sizing, use of new materials, and system-on-chip architectures continue to increase the sensitivity of systems to soft errors. These errors are random, and their causes might be internal (e.g., interconnect coupling) or external (e.g., cosmic radiation). These soft errors are not permanent in nature and cause temporary bit flips known as single-event upsets (SEUs). SEUs are induced errors in circuits caused when charged particles lose energy by ionizing the medium through which they pass, leaving behind a wake of electron-hole pairs that cause temporary failures. If these failures occur in security-sensitive modules in a chip, it might compromise the security guarantees of the chip. For instance, these temporary failures could be bit flips that change the privilege of a regular user to root.

Common Consequences

This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.

Scope	Impact	Likelihood
Availability Access Control	Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Instability; Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Implement triple-modular redundancy around security-sensitive modules.

Phase: Architecture and Design

SEUs mostly affect SRAMs. For SRAMs storing security-critical data, implement Error-Correcting-Codes (ECC) and Address Interleaving.

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	Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.	1384	Improper Handling of Physical or Environmental Conditions
PeerOf	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.	1254	Incorrect Comparison Logic Granularity

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.	1199	General Circuit and Logic Design Concerns
MemberOf	Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.	1388	Physical Access Issues and Concerns

Modes Of Introduction

The different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.

Phase	Note
Architecture and Design
Implementation

Applicable Platforms

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: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

This is an example from [REF-1089]. See the reference for full details of this issue.

Parity is error detecting but not error correcting.

(bad code)

Example Language: Other

Due to single-event upsets, bits are flipped in memories. As a result, memory-parity checks fail, which results in restart and a temporary denial of service of two to three minutes.

(good code)

Example Language: Other

Using error-correcting codes could have avoided the restart caused by SEUs.

Example 2

In 2016, a security researcher, who was also a patient using a pacemaker, was on an airplane when a bit flip occurred in the pacemaker, likely due to the higher prevalence of cosmic radiation at such heights. The pacemaker was designed to account for bit flips and went into a default safe mode, which still forced the patient to go to a hospital to get it reset. The bit flip also inadvertently enabled the researcher to access the crash file, perform reverse engineering, and detect a hard-coded key. [REF-1101]

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.	1365	ICS Communications: Unreliability
MemberOf	Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.	1405	Comprehensive Categorization: Improper Check or Handling of Exceptional Conditions

Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Usage: ALLOWED

(this CWE ID may 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.

References

[REF-1086] Fan Wang and Vishwani D. Agrawal. "Single Event Upset: An Embedded Tutorial". <https://www.eng.auburn.edu/~agrawvd/TALKS/tutorial_6pg.pdf>.

[REF-1087] P. D. Bradley and E. Normand. "Single Event Upsets in Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators". <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=736549&tag=1>. URL validated: 2023-04-07.

[REF-1088] Melanie Berg, Kenneth LaBel and Jonathan Pellish. "Single Event Effects in FPGA Devices 2015-2016". <https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20160007754>.

[REF-1089] Cisco. "Cisco 12000 Single Event Upset Failures Overview and Work Around Summary". <https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/field-notices/200/fn25994.html>.

[REF-1090] Cypress. "Different Ways to Mitigate Soft Errors in Asynchronous SRAMs - KBA90939". <https://community.infineon.com/t5/Knowledge-Base-Articles/Different-Ways-to-Mitigate-Soft-Errors-in-Asynchronous-SRAMs-KBA90939/ta-p/257944>. URL validated: 2023-04-07.

[REF-1091] Ian Johnston. "Cosmic particles can change elections and cause plans to fall through the sky, scientists warn". <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/subatomic-particles-cosmic-rays-computers-change-elections-planes-autopilot-a7584616.html>.

[REF-1101] Anders B. Wilhelmsen, Eivind S. Kristiansen and Marie Moe. "The Hard-coded Key to my Heart - Hacking a Pacemaker Programmer". 2019-08-10. <https://anderbw.github.io/2019-08-10-DC27-Biohacking-pacemaker-programmer.pdf>.

Content History

Submissions
Submission Date	Submitter	Organization
2020-02-12 (CWE 4.1, 2020-02-24)	Arun Kanuparthi, Hareesh Khattri, Parbati Kumar Manna, Narasimha Kumar V Mangipudi	Intel Corporation
2020-02-12 (CWE 4.1, 2020-02-24)
Modifications
Modification Date	Modifier	Organization
2022-04-28	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2022-04-28	updated Relationships
2022-06-28	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2022-06-28	updated Relationships
2023-04-27	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2023-04-27	updated References, Relationships
2023-06-29	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2023-06-29	updated Mapping_Notes


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Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-1261: Improper Handling of Single Event Upsets

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