CWE-1421

Exposure of Sensitive Information in Shared Microarchitectural Structures during Transient Execution
AI Translation Available

A processor event may allow transient operations to access
architecturally restricted data (for example, in another address
space) in a shared microarchitectural structure (for example, a CPU
cache), potentially exposing the data over a covert channel.

Status
incomplete
Abstraction
base

Many commodity processors have Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) features that protect software components from one another. These features can include memory segmentation, virtual memory, privilege rings, trusted execution environments, and virtual machines, among others. For example, virtual memory provides each process with its own address space, which prevents processes from accessing each other's private data. Many of these features can be used to form hardware-enforced security boundaries between software components.

Many commodity processors also share microarchitectural resources that cache (temporarily store) data, which may be confidential. These resources may be shared across processor contexts, including across SMT threads, privilege rings, or others.

When transient operations allow access to ISA-protected data in a shared microarchitectural resource, this might violate users' expectations of the ISA feature that is bypassed. For example, if transient operations can access a victim's private data in a shared microarchitectural resource, then the operations' microarchitectural side effects may correspond to the accessed data. If an attacker can trigger these transient operations and observe their side effects through a covert channel [REF-1400], then the attacker may be able to infer the victim's private data. Private data could include sensitive program data, OS/VMM data, page table data (such as memory addresses), system configuration data (see Demonstrative Example 3), or any other data that the attacker does not have the required privileges to access.

Common Consequences

confidentiality
Impacts
read memory

Detection Methods

manual analysis automated analysis fuzzing

Potential Mitigations

Phases:
architecture and design build and compilation implementation system configuration patching and maintenance requirements
Descriptions:
• Hardware designers may choose to engineer the processor's pipeline to prevent architecturally restricted data from being used by operations that can execute transiently.
• Hardware designers may choose to sanitize specific microarchitectural state (for example, store buffers) when the processor transitions to a different context, such as whenever a system call is invoked. Alternatively, the hardware may expose instruction(s) that allow software to sanitize microarchitectural state according to the user or system administrator's threat model. These mitigation approaches are similar to those that address CWE-226; however, sanitizing microarchitectural state may not be the optimal or best way to mitigate this weakness on every processor design.
• Software architects may design software to enforce strong isolation between different contexts. For example, kernel page table isolation (KPTI) mitigates the Meltdown vulnerability [REF-1401] by separating user-mode page tables from kernel-mode page tables, which prevents user-mode processes from using Meltdown to transiently access kernel memory [REF-1404].
• Use software techniques (including the use of serialization instructions) that are intended to reduce the number of instructions that can be executed transiently after a processor event or misprediction.
• Hardware designers may choose not to share microarchitectural resources that can contain sensitive data, such as fill buffers and store buffers.
• The hardware designer can attempt to prevent transient execution from causing observable discrepancies in specific covert channels.
• If the weakness is exposed by a single instruction (or a small set of instructions), then the compiler (or JIT, etc.) can be configured to prevent the affected instruction(s) from being generated, and instead generate an alternate sequence of instructions that is not affected by the weakness.
• System software can mitigate this weakness by invoking state-sanitizing operations when switching from one context to another, according to the hardware vendor's recommendations.
• Some systems may allow the user to disable (for example, in the BIOS) microarchitectural features that allow transient access to architecturally restricted data.
• This kind of patch may not be feasible or implementable for all processors or all weaknesses.
• Some systems may allow the user to disable (for example, in the BIOS) sharing of the affected resource.
• The hardware vendor may provide a patch to sanitize the affected shared microarchitectural state when the processor transitions to a different context.
• Processor designers, system software vendors, or other agents may choose to restrict the ability of unprivileged software to access to high-resolution timers that are commonly used to monitor covert channels.