CWE

Common Weakness Enumeration

A community-developed list of SW & HW weaknesses that can become vulnerabilities
New to CWE? click here!
CWE Most Important Hardware Weaknesses
CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Weaknesses
Home > CWE List > CWE-1351: Improper Handling of Hardware Behavior in Exceptionally Cold Environments (4.16)  
ID

CWE-1351: Improper Handling of Hardware Behavior in Exceptionally Cold Environments

Weakness ID: 1351
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.
View customized information:
For users who are interested in more notional aspects of a weakness. Example: educators, technical writers, and project/program managers. For users who are concerned with the practical application and details about the nature of a weakness and how to prevent it from happening. Example: tool developers, security researchers, pen-testers, incident response analysts. For users who are mapping an issue to CWE/CAPEC IDs, i.e., finding the most appropriate CWE for a specific issue (e.g., a CVE record). Example: tool developers, security researchers. For users who wish to see all available information for the CWE/CAPEC entry. For users who want to customize what details are displayed.
×

Edit Custom Filter


+ Description
A hardware device, or the firmware running on it, is missing or has incorrect protection features to maintain goals of security primitives when the device is cooled below standard operating temperatures.
+ Extended Description

The hardware designer may improperly anticipate hardware behavior when exposed to exceptionally cold conditions. As a result they may introduce a weakness by not accounting for the modified behavior of critical components when in extreme environments.

An example of a change in behavior is that power loss won't clear/reset any volatile state when cooled below standard operating temperatures. This may result in a weakness when the starting state of the volatile memory is being relied upon for a security decision. For example, a Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) may be supplied as a security primitive to improve confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity guarantees. However, when the PUF is paired with DRAM, SRAM, or another temperature sensitive entropy source, the system designer may introduce weakness by failing to account for the chosen entropy source's behavior at exceptionally low temperatures. In the case of DRAM and SRAM, when power is cycled at low temperatures, the device will not contain the bitwise biasing caused by inconsistencies in manufacturing and will instead contain the data from previous boot. Should the PUF primitive be used in a cryptographic construction which does not account for full adversary control of PUF seed data, weakness would arise.

This weakness does not cover "Cold Boot Attacks" wherein RAM or other external storage is super cooled and read externally by an attacker.

+ Common Consequences
Section HelpThis 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
Integrity
Authentication

Technical Impact: Varies by Context; Unexpected State

Consequences of this weakness are highly contextual.
 Low
+ Potential Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

The system should account for security primitive behavior when cooled outside standard temperatures.
+ Relationships
Section Help 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 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
Section Help 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 Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 1205 Security Primitives and Cryptography Issues
MemberOf Category 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
Section HelpThe 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
Section HelpThis 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: Embedded (Undetermined Prevalence)

Class: Microcomputer (Undetermined Prevalence)

Technologies

Class: System on Chip (Undetermined Prevalence)

+ Memberships
Section HelpThis 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 CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 1365 ICS Communications: Unreliability
MemberOf CategoryCategory - 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-1181] Nikolaos Athanasios Anagnostopoulos, Tolga Arul, Markus Rosenstihl, André Schaller, Sebastian Gabmeyer and Stefan Katzenbeisser. "Low-Temperature Data Remnanence Attacks Against Intrinsic SRAM PUFs". 2018-10-15. <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8491873/>.
[REF-1182] Yuan Cao, Yunyi Guo, Benyu Liu, Wei Ge, Min Zhu and Chip-Hong Chang. "A Fully Digital Physical Unclonable Function Based Temperature Sensor for Secure Remote Sensing". 2018-10-11. <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8487347/>.
[REF-1183] Urbi Chatterjee, Soumi Chatterjee, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay and Rajat Subhra Chakraborty. "Machine Learning Assisted PUF Calibration for Trustworthy Proof of Sensor Data in IoT". 2020-06. <https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3393628>. URL validated: 2023-04-07.
+ Content History
+ Submissions
Submission Date Submitter Organization
2020-10-23
(CWE 4.5, 2021-07-20) 		Paul A. Wortman Wells Fargo
+ Modifications
Modification Date Modifier Organization
2022-04-28 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2022-06-28 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2022-10-13 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated References, Related_Attack_Patterns
2023-01-31 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Related_Attack_Patterns
2023-04-27 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
2023-06-29 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
Page Last Updated: November 19, 2024
 

Use of the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE™) and the associated references from this website are subject to the Terms of Use. CWE is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and managed by the Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute (HSSEDI) which is operated by The MITRE Corporation (MITRE). Copyright © 2006–2025, The MITRE Corporation. CWE, CWSS, CWRAF, and the CWE logo are trademarks of The MITRE Corporation.