CWE-1296

Incorrect Chaining or Granularity of Debug Components
AI Translation Available

The product's debug components contain incorrect chaining or granularity of debug components.

Status
incomplete
Abstraction
base
Not Language-Specific Verilog VHDL Processor Hardware Not Technology-Specific

For debugging and troubleshooting a chip, several hardware design elements are often implemented, including:

- Various Test Access Ports (TAPs) allow boundary scan commands to be executed.

- For scanning the internal components of a chip, there are scan cells that allow the chip to be used as a 'stimulus and response' mechanism.

- Chipmakers might create custom methods to observe the internal components of their chips by placing various tracing hubs within their chip and creating hierarchical or interconnected structures among those hubs.

Logic errors during design or synthesis could misconfigure the interconnection of the debug components, which could allow unintended access permissions.

Common Consequences

confidentiality integrity access control authentication authorization availability accountability
Impacts
gain privileges or assume identity bypass protection mechanism execute unauthorized code or commands modify memory modify files or directories

Detection Methods

architecture or design review dynamic analysis with manual results interpretation

Potential Mitigations

Phases:
implementation
Descriptions:
• Ensure that debug components are properly chained and their granularity is maintained at different authentication levels.