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Weakness

Sequence of Processor Instructions Leads to Unexpected Behavior

CWE-1281 · Base · Incomplete

Specific combinations of processor instructions lead to undesirable behavior such as locking the processor until a hard reset performed.

Extended description

If the instruction set architecture (ISA) and processor logic are not designed carefully and tested thoroughly, certain combinations of instructions may lead to locking the processor or other unexpected and undesirable behavior. Upon encountering unimplemented instruction opcodes or illegal instruction operands, the processor should throw an exception and carry on without negatively impacting security. However, specific combinations of legal and illegal instructions may cause unexpected behavior with security implications such as allowing unprivileged programs to completely lock the CPU.

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How adversaries exploit this weakness, per MITRE CAPEC.

CVEs With This Weakness

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CVEs tagged with this weakness.
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