CWE-516: DEPRECATED: Covert Timing Channel
Learn about CWE-516 (DEPRECATED: Covert Timing Channel), its security impact, exploitation methods, and prevention guidelines.
What is DEPRECATED: Covert Timing Channel?
• Overview: A covert timing channel is a type of security vulnerability where attackers exploit the timing of operations to extract sensitive information, using the time it takes to execute operations as a means of communication or data exfiltration.
• Exploitation Methods:
- Attackers can measure the time taken for certain operations or processes to execute and correlate these timings with sensitive data.
- Common attack patterns include observing variations in processing time when different data values are processed, using network latency, or leveraging shared resource access times.
• Security Impact:
- Direct consequences of successful exploitation include unauthorized access to sensitive information without detection.
- Potential cascading effects involve further data breaches or the compromise of other systems if sensitive data is used to facilitate additional attacks.
- Business impact can be severe, including loss of customer trust, reputational damage, and financial losses due to data breaches or regulatory fines.
• Prevention Guidelines:
- Specific code-level fixes include implementing constant-time algorithms to ensure consistent execution times regardless of input data.
- Security best practices involve thorough code reviews, regular security testing, and awareness training for developers on side-channel attacks.
- Recommended tools and frameworks include using libraries that provide constant-time operations and leveraging static analysis tools to detect timing vulnerabilities.
Technical Details
Likelihood of Exploit: Not specified
Affected Languages: Not specified
Affected Technologies: Not specified