The product does not provide its users with the ability to update or patch its firmware to address any vulnerabilities or weaknesses that may be present.
Without the ability to patch or update firmware, consumers will be left vulnerable to exploitation of any known vulnerabilities, or any vulnerabilities that are discovered in the future. This can expose consumers to permanent risk throughout the entire lifetime of the device, which could be years or decades. Some external protective measures and mitigations might be employed to aid in preventing or reducing the risk of malicious attack, but the root weakness cannot be corrected.
Threat Mapped score: 0.0
Industry: Finiancial
Threat priority: Unclassified
CVE: CVE-2020-9054 — KEV
Chain: network-attached storage (NAS) device has a critical OS command injection (CWE-78) vulnerability that is actively exploited to place IoT devices into a botnet, but some products are "end-of-support" and cannot be patched (CWE-1277). [REF-1097]
CVE: [REF-1095]
A hardware "smart lock" has weak key generation that allows attackers to steal the key by BLE sniffing, but the device's firmware cannot be upgraded and hence remains vulnerable [REF-1095].
N/A
| Phase | Note |
|---|---|
| Requirements | Requirements development might not consider the importance of updates over the lifetime of the product, or might not choose the ability 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. |
| Implementation | The weakness can appear through oversight during implementation. |
Intro: 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.
The refrigerator has no means of patching and is hacked becoming a spewer of email spam.