CWE-1331

Improper Isolation of Shared Resources in Network On Chip (NoC)
AI Translation Available

The Network On Chip (NoC) does not isolate or incorrectly isolates its on-chip-fabric and internal resources such that they are shared between trusted and untrusted agents, creating timing channels.

Status
stable
Abstraction
base
Security Hardware Not Technology-Specific

Typically, network on chips (NoC) have many internal resources that are shared between packets from different trust domains. These resources include internal buffers, crossbars and switches, individual ports, and channels. The sharing of resources causes contention and introduces interference between differently trusted domains, which poses a security threat via a timing channel, allowing attackers to infer data that belongs to a trusted agent. This may also result in introducing network interference, resulting in degraded throughput and latency.

Common Consequences

confidentiality availability
Impacts
dos: resource consumption (other) varies by context other

Detection Methods

manual analysis

Potential Mitigations

Phases:
architecture and design implementation
Descriptions:
• Implement priority-based arbitration inside the NoC and have dedicated buffers or virtual channels for routing secret data from trusted agents.