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Weakness (CWE)

CWE-1204: Generation of Weak Initialization Vector (IV)

Base Incomplete

The product uses a cryptographic primitive that uses an Initialization
Vector (IV), but the product does not generate IVs that are
sufficiently unpredictable or unique according to the expected
cryptographic requirements for that primitive.

More detail

By design, some cryptographic primitives
(such as block ciphers) require that IVs
must have certain properties for the
uniqueness and/or unpredictability of an
IV. Primitives may vary in how important
these properties are.

How to prevent it (1 mitigation)

  1. Implementation

    Different cipher
    modes have different requirements for
    their IVs. When choosing and implementing
    a mode, it is important to understand
    those requirements in order to keep
    security guarantees intact. Generally, it
    is safest to generate a random IV, since
    it will be both unpredictable and have a
    very low chance of being non-unique. IVs
    do not have to be kept secret, so if
    generating duplicate IVs is a concern, a
    list of already-used IVs can be kept and
    checked against.

    NIST offers recommendations on generation of IVs for modes of which they have approved. These include options for when random IVs are not practical. For CBC, CFB, and OFB, see [REF-1175]; for GCM, see [REF-1178].

Source: MITRE CWE-1204

All Critical High Medium Low Exploited only Public exploit

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