CWE-1329: Reliance on Component That is Not Updateable
Description
The product contains a component that cannot be updated or patched in order to remove vulnerabilities or significant bugs.
- Abstraction
- BaseA weakness specific enough to point to detection and prevention methods.
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Status
- Incomplete
Common consequences
- ConfidentialityIntegrityAccess ControlAuthenticationAuthorizationOther
Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; Quality Degradation; Reduce Maintainability
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.
Potential mitigations
- 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 DesignImplementationEffectiveness: Moderate
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.
- Implementation
Implement the necessary functionality to allow each component to be updated.
Related weaknesses
CAPEC attack patterns that exploit it
CWE 4.20 links no CAPEC attack pattern to this weakness.