CWE-1298

Hardware Logic Contains Race Conditions
AI Translation Available

A race condition in the hardware logic results in undermining security guarantees of the system.

Status
draft
Abstraction
base
Verilog VHDL System on Chip

A race condition in logic circuits typically occurs when a logic gate gets inputs from signals that have traversed different paths while originating from the same source. Such inputs to the gate can change at slightly different times in response to a change in the source signal. This results in a timing error or a glitch (temporary or permanent) that causes the output to change to an unwanted state before settling back to the desired state. If such timing errors occur in access control logic or finite state machines that are implemented in security sensitive flows, an attacker might exploit them to circumvent existing protections.

Common Consequences

access control
Impacts
bypass protection mechanism gain privileges or assume identity alter execution logic

Potential Mitigations

Phases:
architecture and design implementation
Descriptions:
• Logic redundancy can be implemented along security critical paths to prevent race conditions. To avoid metastability, it is a good practice in general to default to a secure state in which access is not given to untrusted agents.
• Adopting design practices that encourage designers to recognize and eliminate race conditions, such as Karnaugh maps, could result in the decrease in occurrences of race conditions.