If the component is discovered to contain a vulnerability or critical bug, but the issue cannot be fixed using an update or patch, then the product's owner will not be able to protect against the issue. The only option might be replacement of the product, which could be too financially or operationally expensive for the product owner. As a result, the inability to patch or update can leave the product open to attacker exploitation or critical operation failures. This weakness can be especially difficult to manage when using ROM, firmware, or similar components that traditionally have had limited or no update capabilities.
In industries such as healthcare, "legacy" devices can be operated for decades. As a US task force report [REF-1197] notes, "the inability to update or replace equipment has both large and small health care delivery organizations struggle with numerous unsupported legacy systems that cannot easily be replaced (hardware, software, and operating systems) with large numbers of vulnerabilities and few modern countermeasures."
While hardware can be prone to this weakness, software systems can also be affected, such as when a third-party driver or library is no longer actively maintained or supported but is still critical for the required functionality.
| Impact | Details |
|---|---|
|
Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; Quality Degradation; Reduce Maintainability |
Scope: Confidentiality, Integrity, Access Control, Authentication, Authorization, Other
If an attacker can identify an exploitable vulnerability in one product that has no means of patching, the attack may be used against all affected versions of that product.
|
| Phase(s) | Mitigation |
|---|---|
|
Requirements |
Specify requirements that each component should be updateable, including ROM, firmware, etc.
|
|
Architecture and Design |
Design the product to allow for updating of its components. Include the external infrastructure that might be necessary to support updates, such as distribution servers.
|
|
Architecture and Design; Implementation |
With hardware, support patches that can be programmed in-field or during manufacturing through hardware fuses. This feature can be used for limited patching of devices after shipping, or for the next batch of silicon devices manufactured, without changing the full device ROM.
Effectiveness: Moderate Note:
Some parts of the hardware initialization or signature verification done to authenticate patches will always be "not patchable." Hardware-fuse-based patches will also have limitations in terms of size and the number of patches that can be supported.
|
|
Implementation |
Implement the necessary functionality to allow each component to be updated.
|
| Nature | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChildOf | Pillar Pillar - a weakness that is the most abstract type of weakness and represents a theme for all class/base/variant weaknesses related to it. A Pillar is different from a Category as a Pillar is still technically a type of weakness that describes a mistake, while a Category represents a common characteristic used to group related things. | 664 | Improper Control of a Resource Through its Lifetime |
| ChildOf | Class Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource. | 1357 | Reliance on Insufficiently Trustworthy Component |
| ParentOf | Base Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource. | 1277 | Firmware Not Updateable |
| ParentOf | Base Base - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource. | 1310 | Missing Ability to Patch ROM Code |
| Nature | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | Category Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. | 1208 | Cross-Cutting Problems |
| ChildOf | Class Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource. | 1357 | Reliance on Insufficiently Trustworthy Component |
| Phase | Note |
|---|---|
| Requirements | Requirements development might not consider the importance of updates over the lifetime of the product or might intentionally exclude this capability due to concerns such as expense or speed to market. |
| Architecture and Design | Lack of planning during architecture development and design, or external pressures such as speed to market, could ignore the capability to update. |
| Architecture and Design | Designers might omit capabilities for updating a component due to time pressures to release the product or assumptions about the stability of the component. |
| Implementation | The weakness can appear through oversight during implementation. |
Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)
Class: Not OS-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)
Class: Not Architecture-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)
Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)
Class: ICS/OT (Undetermined Prevalence)
Example 1
A refrigerator has an Internet interface for the official purpose of alerting the manufacturer when that refrigerator detects a fault. Because the device is attached to the Internet, the refrigerator is a target for hackers who may wish to use the device other potentially more nefarious purposes.
Example 2
A System-on-Chip (SOC) implements a Root-of-Trust (RoT) in ROM to boot secure code. However, at times this ROM code might have security vulnerabilities and need to be patched. Since ROM is immutable, it can be impossible to patch.
ROM does not have built-in application-programming interfaces (APIs) to patch if the code is vulnerable. Implement mechanisms to patch the vulnerable ROM code.
Example 3
The example code is taken from the JTAG module of the buggy OpenPiton SoC of HACK@DAC'21. JTAG is protected with a password checker. Access to JTAG operations will be denied unless the correct password is provided by the user. This user-provided password is first sent to the HMAC module where it is hashed with a secret crypto key. This user password hash (pass_hash) is then compared with the hash of the correct password (exp_hash). If they match, JTAG will then be unlocked.
However, the SoC's crypto key is hardcoded into the design and cannot be updated [REF-1387]. Therefore, if the key is leaked somehow, there is no way to reprovision the key without having the device replaced.
To fix this issue, a local register should be used (hmac_key_reg) to store the crypto key. If designers need to update the key, they can upload the new key through an input port (hmac_key_i) to the local register by enabling the patching signal (hmac_patch_en) [REF-1388].
Note: this is a curated list of examples for users to understand the variety of ways in which this weakness can be introduced. It is not a complete list of all CVEs that are related to this CWE entry.
| Reference | Description |
|---|---|
| Ordinality | Description |
|---|---|
|
Primary
|
(where the weakness exists independent of other weaknesses)
|
| Method | Details |
|---|---|
|
Architecture or Design Review |
Check the consumer or maintainer documentation, the architecture/design documentation, or the original requirements to ensure that the documentation includes details for how to update the firmware.
Effectiveness: Moderate |
| Nature | Type | ID | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| MemberOf | CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. | 1368 | ICS Dependencies (& Architecture): External Digital Systems |
| MemberOf | CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. | 1415 | Comprehensive Categorization: Resource Control |
Rationale
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.Comments
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.| Submissions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Submission Date | Submitter | Organization |
|
2020年12月03日
(CWE 4.3, 2020年12月10日) |
CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| Contributions | ||
| Contribution Date | Contributor | Organization |
| 2023年06月21日 | Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Jeyavijayan Rajendran | Texas A&M University |
| suggested demonstrative example | ||
| 2023年06月21日 | Shaza Zeitouni, Mohamadreza Rostami, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi | Technical University of Darmstadt |
| suggested demonstrative example | ||
| Modifications | ||
| Modification Date | Modifier | Organization |
|
2025年04月03日
(CWE 4.17, 2025年04月03日) |
CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| updated Relationships | ||
|
2024年02月29日
(CWE 4.14, 2024年02月29日) |
CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| updated Demonstrative_Examples, References | ||
| 2023年06月29日 | CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| updated Mapping_Notes | ||
| 2023年04月27日 | CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| updated Relationships | ||
| 2023年01月31日 | CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| updated Applicable_Platforms, Relationships | ||
| 2022年04月28日 | CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| updated Common_Consequences, Description, Detection_Factors, Maintenance_Notes, Modes_of_Introduction, Observed_Examples, Potential_Mitigations, References, Relationships, Time_of_Introduction, Weakness_Ordinalities | ||
| 2021年07月20日 | CWE Content Team | MITRE |
| updated Demonstrative_Examples, Description, References | ||
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