CWE-1300

Improper Protection of Physical Side Channels
AI Translation Available

The device does not contain sufficient protection
mechanisms to prevent physical side channels from exposing
sensitive information due to patterns in physically observable
phenomena such as variations in power consumption,
electromagnetic emissions (EME), or acoustic emissions.

Status
stable
Abstraction
base

An adversary could monitor and measure physical phenomena to detect patterns and make inferences, even if it is not possible to extract the information in the digital domain.

Physical side channels have been well-studied for decades in the context of breaking implementations of cryptographic algorithms or other attacks against security features. These side channels may be easily observed by an adversary with physical access to the device, or using a tool that is in close proximity. If the adversary can monitor hardware operation and correlate its data processing with power, EME, and acoustic measurements, the adversary might be able to recover of secret keys and data.

Common Consequences

confidentiality
Impacts
read memory read application data

Detection Methods

manual analysis

Potential Mitigations

Phases:
architecture and design implementation
Descriptions:
• Apply blinding or masking techniques to implementations of cryptographic algorithms.
• Add shielding or tamper-resistant protections to the device to increase the difficulty of obtaining measurements of the side-channel.

Functional Areas

power