CWE-1331
Weakness AllowedImproper Isolation of Shared Resources in Network On Chip (NoC)
Abstraction: Base · Status: Stable
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.
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.
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
Modes of introduction
Detection methods
Manual Analysis
Providing marker flags to send through the interfaces coupled with examination of which users are able to read or manipulate the flags will help verify that the proper isolation has been achieved and is effective.
Effectiveness: Moderate
Content history
provided references and background information
updated Background_Details, Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Detection_Factors, Name, References, Relationships, Weakness_Ordinalities
updated Applicable_Platforms, References
updated Applicable_Platforms
updated Relationships
updated Mapping_Notes
updated Observed_Examples
0 vulnerabilities reference this CWE, most recent first.
No vulnerabilities reference this CWE.
Mitigation
Implement priority-based arbitration inside the NoC and have dedicated buffers or virtual channels for routing secret data from trusted agents.
CAPEC-124: Shared Resource Manipulation
An adversary exploits a resource shared between multiple applications, an application pool or hardware pin multiplexing to affect behavior. Resources may be shared between multiple applications or between multiple threads of a single application. Resource sharing is usually accomplished through mutual access to a single memory location or multiplexed hardware pins. If an adversary can manipulate this shared resource (usually by co-opting one of the applications or threads) the other applications or threads using the shared resource will often continue to trust the validity of the compromised shared resource and use it in their calculations. This can result in invalid trust assumptions, corruption of additional data through the normal operations of the other users of the shared resource, or even cause a crash or compromise of the sharing applications.