CWE-1329: Reliance on Component That is Not Updateable
If the component is discovered to contain a vulnerability or critical bug, but the issue cannot be fixed using an update or patch, then the product's owner will not be able to protect against the issue. The only option might be replacement of the product, which could be too financially or operationally expensive for the product owner. As a result, the inability to patch or update can leave the product open to attacker exploitation or critical operation failures. This weakness can be especially difficult to manage when using ROM, firmware, or similar components that traditionally have had limited or no update capabilities.
In industries such as healthcare, "legacy" devices can be operated for decades. As a US task force report [REF-1197] notes, "the inability to update or replace equipment has both large and small health care delivery organizations struggle with numerous unsupported legacy systems that cannot easily be replaced (hardware, software, and operating systems) with large numbers of vulnerabilities and few modern countermeasures."
While hardware can be prone to this weakness, software systems can also be affected, such as when a third-party driver or library is no longer actively maintained or supported but is still critical for the required functionality.
Modes of Introduction
Phase | Note |
---|---|
Requirements | Requirements development might not consider the importance of updates over the lifetime of the product or might intentionally exclude this capability 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. |
Architecture and Design | Designers might omit capabilities for updating a component due to time pressures to release the product or assumptions about the stability of the component. |
Implementation | The weakness can appear through oversight during implementation. |
Applicable Platforms
Type | Class | Name | Prevalence |
---|---|---|---|
Language | Not Language-Specific | ||
Operating_system | Not OS-Specific | ||
Architecture | Not Architecture-Specific | ||
Technology | Not Technology-Specific | ||
Technology | ICS/OT |
Relationships
CVEs Published
CVSS Severity
CVSS Severity - By Year
CVSS Base Score
# CVE | Description | CVSS | EPSS | EPSS Trend (30 days) | Affected Products | Weaknesses | Security Advisories | Exploits | PoC | Pubblication Date | Modification Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
# CVE | Description | CVSS | EPSS | EPSS Trend (30 days) | Affected Products | Weaknesses | Security Advisories | PoC | Pubblication Date | Modification Date |