Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-1291

Weakness Allowed

Public Key Re-Use for Signing both Debug and Production Code

Abstraction: Base · Status: Draft

API response cwe.mitre.org

The same public key is used for signing both debug and production code.

A common usage of public-key cryptography is to verify the integrity and authenticity of another entity (for example a firmware binary). If a company wants to ensure that its firmware runs only on its own hardware, before the firmware runs, an encrypted hash of the firmware image will be decrypted with the public key and then verified against the now-computed hash of the firmware image. This means that the public key forms the root of trust, which necessitates that the public key itself must be protected and used properly.

During the development phase, debug firmware enables many hardware debug hooks, debug modes, and debug messages for testing. Those debug facilities provide significant, additional views about the firmware's capability and, in some cases, additional capability into the chip or SoC. If compromised, these capabilities could be exploited by an attacker to take full control of the system.

Once the product exits the manufacturing stage and enters production, it is good practice to use a different public key. Debug firmware images are known to leak. With the debug key being reused as the production key, the debug image will also work on the production image. Thus, it will open all the internal, debug capabilities to the attacker.

If a different public key is used for the production image, even if the attacker gains access to the debug firmware image, they will not be able to run it on a production machine. Thus, damage will be limited to the intellectual property leakage resulting from the debug image.

Dimensions

  • Behavior-Type: Re-Use
  • Resource-Type: Key
  • Resource-Property: Public
  • Behavior-Type: Signing
  • Code-Type: Code
  • Code-Property: Debug and Production
Mapping guidance

This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.

Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

Relationships and members
ChildOf: CWE-693 · View CWE-1000
PeerOf: CWE-321 (symmetric) · View CWE-1000
Modes of introduction
Implementation
Detection methods

Architecture or Design Review

Compare the debug key with the production key to make sure that they are not the same.

Effectiveness: High

Dynamic Analysis with Manual Results Interpretation

Compare the debug key with the production key to make sure that they are not the same.

Effectiveness: High

Content history
Submission: Parbati Kumar Manna, Hareesh Khattri, Arun Kanuparthi · Intel Corporation · 2020-05-26 · CWE 4.2
Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2023-04-27 · CWE 4.11

updated Relationships

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2023-06-29 · CWE 4.12

updated Mapping_Notes

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2025-12-11 · CWE 4.19

updated Weakness_Ordinalities

Modification: CWE Content Team · MITRE · 2026-10-28 · CWE 5.0

updated Dimensions

2 vulnerabilities reference this CWE, most recent first.

CVE-2022-1665 (GCVE-0-2022-1665)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2022-06-21 14:23 – Updated: 2026-10-08 21:03
VLAI
Summary
A set of pre-production kernel packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM Power architecture can be booted by the grub in Secure Boot mode even though it shouldn't. These kernel builds don't have the secure boot lockdown patches applied to it and can bypass the secure boot validations, allowing the attacker to load another non-trusted code.
Severity
No CVSS data available.
SSVC
Exploitation: none Automatable: no Technical Impact: total
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2026-10-08 21:01 UTC
CWE
Assigner
redhat CNA under the redhat root
CNA scorecard B 82/100 over 1185 records in the last 180 days details
References
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version
n/a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Affected: 8.6
Show details on NVD website
To clipboard 

{
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      {
        "providerMetadata": {
          "dateUpdated": "2024-08-03T00:10:03.767Z",
          "orgId": "af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108",
          "shortName": "CVE"
        },
        "references": [
          {
            "tags": [
              "x_refsource_MISC",
              "x_transferred"
            ],
            "url": "https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2089529"
          }
        ],
        "title": "CVE Program Container"
      },
      {
        "metrics": [
          {
            "other": {
              "content": {
                "id": "CVE-2022-1665",
                "options": [
                  {
                    "Exploitation": "none"
                  },
                  {
                    "Automatable": "no"
                  },
                  {
                    "Technical Impact": "total"
                  }
                ],
                "role": "CISA Coordinator",
                "timestamp": "2026-10-08T21:01:22.114121Z",
                "version": "2.0.3"
              },
              "type": "ssvc"
            }
          }
        ],
        "providerMetadata": {
          "dateUpdated": "2026-10-08T21:03:29.939Z",
          "orgId": "134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0",
          "shortName": "CISA-ADP"
        },
        "title": "CISA ADP Vulnrichment"
      }
    ],
    "cna": {
      "affected": [
        {
          "product": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux",
          "vendor": "n/a",
          "versions": [
            {
              "status": "affected",
              "version": "8.6"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "descriptions": [
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "value": "A set of pre-production kernel packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM Power architecture can be booted by the grub in Secure Boot mode even though it shouldn\u0027t. These kernel builds don\u0027t have the secure boot lockdown patches applied to it and can bypass the secure boot validations, allowing the attacker to load another non-trusted code."
        }
      ],
      "problemTypes": [
        {
          "descriptions": [
            {
              "cweId": "CWE-1291",
              "description": "CWE-1291",
              "lang": "en",
              "type": "CWE"
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      "providerMetadata": {
        "dateUpdated": "2022-06-21T14:23:40.000Z",
        "orgId": "53f830b8-0a3f-465b-8143-3b8a9948e749",
        "shortName": "redhat"
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      "references": [
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          "tags": [
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  "cveMetadata": {
    "assignerOrgId": "53f830b8-0a3f-465b-8143-3b8a9948e749",
    "assignerShortName": "redhat",
    "cveId": "CVE-2022-1665",
    "datePublished": "2022-06-21T14:23:40.000Z",
    "dateReserved": "2022-05-10T00:00:00.000Z",
    "dateUpdated": "2026-10-08T21:03:29.939Z",
    "state": "PUBLISHED"
  },
  "dataType": "CVE_RECORD",
  "dataVersion": "5.2"
}

GHSA-23QR-P57H-8GX4

Vulnerability from github – Published: 2022-06-22 00:00 – Updated: 2022-06-30 00:00
VLAI
Details

A set of pre-production kernel packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM Power architecture can be booted by the grub in Secure Boot mode even though it shouldn't. These kernel builds don't have the secure boot lockdown patches applied to it and can bypass the secure boot validations, allowing the attacker to load another non-trusted code.

Severity
8.8 (High)
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Show details on source website
To clipboard 

{
  "affected": [],
  "aliases": [
    "CVE-2022-1665"
  ],
  "database_specific": {
    "cwe_ids": [
      "CWE-1291"
    ],
    "github_reviewed": false,
    "github_reviewed_at": null,
    "nvd_published_at": "2022-06-21T15:15:00Z",
    "severity": "HIGH"
  },
  "details": "A set of pre-production kernel packages of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM Power architecture can be booted by the grub in Secure Boot mode even though it shouldn\u0027t. These kernel builds don\u0027t have the secure boot lockdown patches applied to it and can bypass the secure boot validations, allowing the attacker to load another non-trusted code.",
  "id": "GHSA-23qr-p57h-8gx4",
  "modified": "2022-06-30T00:00:40Z",
  "published": "2022-06-22T00:00:54Z",
  "references": [
    {
      "type": "ADVISORY",
      "url": "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-1665"
    },
    {
      "type": "WEB",
      "url": "https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2089529"
    }
  ],
  "schema_version": "1.4.0",
  "severity": [
    {
      "score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H",
      "type": "CVSS_V3"
    }
  ]
}
Mitigation
Implementation

Use different keys for Production and Debug.

No CAPEC attack patterns related to this CWE.

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