CWE-1326: Missing Immutable Root of Trust in Hardware

Description

A missing immutable root of trust in the hardware results in the ability to bypass secure boot or execute untrusted or adversarial boot code.

A System-on-Chip (SoC) implements secure boot by verifying or authenticating signed boot code. The signing of the code is achieved by an entity that the SoC trusts. Before executing the boot code, the SoC verifies that the code or the public key with which the code has been signed has not been tampered with. The other data upon which the SoC depends are system-hardware settings in fuses such as whether "Secure Boot is enabled". These data play a crucial role in establishing a Root of Trust (RoT) to execute secure-boot flows. One of the many ways RoT is achieved is by storing the code and data in memory or fuses. This memory should be immutable, i.e., once the RoT is programmed/provisioned in memory, that memory should be locked and prevented from further programming or writes. If the memory contents (i.e., RoT) are mutable, then an adversary can modify the RoT to execute their choice of code, resulting in a compromised secure boot. Note that, for components like ROM, secure patching/update features should be supported to allow authenticated and authorized updates in the field.

Potential Impact

Demonstrative Examples

...
                            always_ff @(posedge clk_i) begin
                                if (req_i) begin
                                    if (!we_i) begin
										raddr_q <= addr_i[$clog2(RomSize)-1+3:3];
										end else begin
										mem[addr_i[$clog2(RomSize)-1+3:3]] <= wdata_i;
										end
									end
								end
                        	...
							
								// this prevents spurious Xes from propagating into the speculative fetch stage of the core
							
							assign rdata_o = (raddr_q < RomSize) ? mem[raddr_q] : '0;
							...

...
                            always_ff @(posedge clk_i) begin
                                if (req_i) begin
										raddr_q <= addr_i[$clog2(RomSize)-1+3:3];
									end
								end
                        	...
							
								// this prevents spurious Xes from propagating into the speculative fetch stage of the core
							
							assign rdata_o = (raddr_q < RomSize) ? mem[raddr_q] : '0;
							...

Mitigations & Prevention

Detection Methods

• Automated Dynamic Analysis High — Automated testing can verify that RoT components are immutable.
• Architecture or Design Review High — Root of trust elements and memory should be part of architecture and design reviews.

Related Weaknesses