CWE-1384: Improper Handling of Physical or Environmental Conditions
Learn about CWE-1384 (Improper Handling of Physical or Environmental Conditions), its security impact, exploitation methods, and prevention guidelines.
What is Improper Handling of Physical or Environmental Conditions?
• Overview: Improper Handling of Physical or Environmental Conditions (CWE-1384) refers to hardware products failing to manage unexpected physical or environmental changes. These products are designed to work within certain limits, but when those limits are exceeded, it can lead to security vulnerabilities.
• Exploitation Methods:
- Attackers can artificially induce extreme environmental conditions, such as temperature or electromagnetic interference, to manipulate hardware behavior.
- Common attack patterns include using focused ion beams to alter material properties or inducing clock glitches to cause incorrect processing.
• Security Impact:
- Direct consequences include incorrect system behavior, such as bit flips affecting authentication decisions.
- Potential cascading effects may result in system crashes or unauthorized access.
- Business impact can include data breaches, system downtime, and loss of customer trust.
• Prevention Guidelines:
- Specific code-level fixes include implementing checks for environmental condition limits and handling exceptions gracefully.
- Security best practices involve designing systems to operate safely beyond expected conditions and using redundancy for critical operations.
- Recommended tools and frameworks include environmental monitoring systems and hardware stress-testing tools to simulate extreme conditions.
Technical Details
Likelihood of Exploit: Not specified
Affected Languages: Not specified
Affected Technologies: System on Chip, ICS/OT