CWE - CWE-1338: Improper Protections Against Hardware Overheating (4.16)

Weakness ID: 1338

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

A hardware device is missing or has inadequate protection features to prevent overheating.

Extended Description

Hardware, electrical circuits, and semiconductor silicon have thermal side effects, such that some of the energy consumed by the device gets dissipated as heat and increases the temperature of the device. For example, in semiconductors, higher-operating frequency of silicon results in higher power dissipation and heat. The leakage current in CMOS circuits increases with temperature, and this creates positive feedback that can result in thermal runaway and damage the device permanently.

Any device lacking protections such as thermal sensors, adequate platform cooling, or thermal insulation is susceptible to attacks by malicious software that might deliberately operate the device in modes that result in overheating. This can be used as an effective denial of service (DoS) or permanent denial of service (PDoS) attack.

Depending on the type of hardware device and its expected usage, such thermal overheating can also cause safety hazards and reliability issues. Note that battery failures can also cause device overheating but the mitigations and examples included in this submission cannot reliably protect against a battery failure.

There can be similar weaknesses with lack of protection from attacks based on overvoltage or overcurrent conditions. However, thermal heat is generated by hardware operation and the device should implement protection from overheating.

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	Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)	High

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

Temperature maximum and minimum limits should be enforced using thermal sensors both in silicon and at the platform level.

Phase: Implementation

The platform should support cooling solutions such as fans that can be modulated based on device-operation needs to maintain a stable temperature.

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.	693	Protection Mechanism Failure

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.	1206	Power, Clock, Thermal, and Reset 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	Such issues could be introduced during hardware architecture, design or 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)

Class: ICS/OT (Undetermined Prevalence)

Power Management Hardware (Undetermined Prevalence)

Processor Hardware (Undetermined Prevalence)

Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

Malicious software running on a core can execute instructions that consume maximum power or increase core frequency. Such a power-virus program could execute on the platform for an extended time to overheat the device, resulting in permanent damage.

Execution core and platform do not support thermal sensors, performance throttling, or platform-cooling countermeasures to ensure that any software executing on the system cannot cause overheating past the maximum allowable temperature.

The platform and SoC should have failsafe thermal limits that are enforced by thermal sensors that trigger critical temperature alerts when high temperature is detected. Upon detection of high temperatures, the platform should trigger cooling or shutdown automatically.

Detection Methods

Dynamic Analysis with Manual Results Interpretation

Dynamic tests should be performed to stress-test temperature controls.

Effectiveness: High

Architecture or Design Review

Power management controls should be part of Architecture and Design reviews.

Effectiveness: High

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.	1367	ICS Dependencies (& Architecture): External Physical Systems
MemberOf	Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.	1413	Comprehensive Categorization: Protection Mechanism Failure

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.

Related Attack Patterns

CAPEC-ID	Attack Pattern Name
CAPEC-624	Hardware Fault Injection
CAPEC-625	Mobile Device Fault Injection

References

[REF-1156] Leonid Grustniy. "Loapi--This Trojan is hot!". 2017-12. <https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/loapi-trojan/20510/>.

Content History

Submissions
Submission Date	Submitter	Organization
2020-05-29 (CWE 4.3, 2020-12-10)	Arun Kanuparthi, Hareesh Khattri, Parbati Kumar Manna	Intel Corporation
2020-05-29 (CWE 4.3, 2020-12-10)
Modifications
Modification Date	Modifier	Organization
2022-04-28	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2022-04-28	updated Applicable_Platforms, Relationships
2022-06-28	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2022-06-28	updated Applicable_Platforms
2022-10-13	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2022-10-13	updated Related_Attack_Patterns
2023-01-31	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2023-01-31	updated Applicable_Platforms, Related_Attack_Patterns
2023-04-27	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2023-04-27	updated Relationships
2023-06-29	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2023-06-29	updated Mapping_Notes


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Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-1338: Improper Protections Against Hardware Overheating

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