CWE-1323, Improper Management of Sensitive Trace Data, applies to system-on-chip designs where trace data collected from several sources ends up in unprotected storage or reaches untrusted agents.
How it happens
To verify complex SoC designs, integrators add IP blocks that trace internal signals in real time. They collect traces from the CPU, crypto coprocessors and on-chip fabrics, aggregate them, and forward them to trace sinks such as debug-trace ports used by external debuggers.
Because the sources are security sensitive, the traces are too. MITRE points to two failure modes. If traces sit in unprotected memory, an untrusted software debugger can read them and extract secrets. If security-sensitive traces are not tagged as secure, an untrusted hardware debugger might access them.
What an attacker gains
The recorded consequence is confidentiality: an adversary can read secret values that were captured in debug traces and stored unsafely.
How to find it
The record lists no detection methods. Review where trace buffers live, who can read them, and whether traces from secure sources carry a security tag that the sink enforces.
How to fix it
MITRE's mitigation: tag traces to indicate the owner and the debugging privilege level (designer, OEM or end user) needed to access each trace.
Quick check
Why are traces sensitive?
They are collected from security-sensitive sources such as the CPU and crypto coprocessors, so they can contain secret values.
