The product fails to adequately prevent the revealing of unnecessary and potentially sensitive system information within debugging messages.
Debug messages are messages that help troubleshoot an issue by revealing the internal state of the system. For example, debug data in design can be exposed through internal memory array dumps or boot logs through interfaces like UART via TAP commands, scan chain, etc. Thus, the more information contained in a debug message, the easier it is to debug. However, there is also the risk of revealing information that could help an attacker either decipher a vulnerability, and/or gain a better understanding of the system. Thus, this extra information could lower the "security by obscurity" factor. While "security by obscurity" alone is insufficient, it can help as a part of "Defense-in-depth".
Threat Mapped score: 0.0
Industry: Finiancial
Threat priority: Unclassified
CVE: CVE-2021-25476
Digital Rights Management (DRM) capability for mobile platform leaks pointer information, simplifying ASLR bypass
CVE: CVE-2020-24491
Processor generates debug message that contains sensitive information ("addresses of memory transactions").
CVE: CVE-2017-18326
modem debug messages include cryptographic keys
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| Phase | Note |
|---|---|
| Implementation | N/A |
Intro: This example here shows how an attacker can take advantage of unnecessary information in debug messages.
Body: Example 1: Suppose in response to a Test Access Port (TAP) chaining request the debug message also reveals the current TAP hierarchy (the full topology) in addition to the success/failure message.