CVE-2025-3301 in Series 2 SoC
Summary
by MITRE • 04/29/2025
DPA countermeasures are unavailable for ECDH key agreement and EdDSA signing operations on Curve25519 and Curve448 on all Series 2 modules and SoCs due to a lack of hardware and software support. A successful DPA attack may result in exposure of confidential information. The best practice is to use the impacted crypto curves and operations with ephemeral keys to reduce the number of DPA traces that can be collected.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/02/2025
The vulnerability described in CVE-2025-3301 represents a critical weakness in cryptographic hardware implementations affecting Series 2 modules and SoCs that utilize Curve25519 and Curve448 elliptic curves for cryptographic operations. This issue fundamentally undermines the security assurances that organizations rely upon when implementing these widely adopted cryptographic standards. The absence of dedicated countermeasures for differential power analysis attacks creates a significant risk surface that adversaries can exploit to extract sensitive cryptographic information from affected devices. The vulnerability specifically impacts both ECDH key agreement and EdDSA signing operations, which are foundational components of modern secure communications protocols and digital signatures.
The technical flaw stems from the complete absence of hardware and software support for implementing effective countermeasures against differential power analysis attacks. This vulnerability directly maps to CWE-310, which classifies cryptographic weaknesses related to insufficient protection against side-channel attacks. The lack of countermeasures means that power consumption patterns during cryptographic operations remain exposed to analysis, allowing attackers to correlate power traces with secret key information. This weakness is particularly severe because Curve25519 and Curve448 are designed to be resistant to many cryptographic attacks, but the absence of DPA protection creates a fundamental security gap that undermines the overall cryptographic security posture of affected systems. The implementation deficiency affects the device's ability to provide the expected security guarantees for these specific cryptographic operations.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple information disclosure, as successful DPA attacks can potentially compromise entire cryptographic systems and the confidentiality of communications. Attackers can exploit this weakness to recover private keys, session secrets, and other sensitive cryptographic material that should remain protected. This vulnerability affects the integrity of secure communications channels, digital signatures, and key exchange mechanisms that depend on these curves. The risk is particularly acute in environments where long-term key usage occurs, as attackers can accumulate multiple power traces over time to increase their chances of successful key recovery. Organizations using these affected modules face potential compromise of their entire cryptographic infrastructure, including TLS connections, secure messaging protocols, and digital signature verification systems.
The recommended mitigation strategy emphasizes the use of ephemeral keys as a best practice to minimize the attack surface and reduce the number of DPA traces available to potential attackers. This approach aligns with security principles outlined in the NIST SP 800-57 standard for key management and cryptographic practices. However, this mitigation is not a complete solution, as it only reduces but does not eliminate the vulnerability. Organizations should consider implementing additional security controls such as monitoring for unusual power consumption patterns, limiting the exposure time of cryptographic operations, and potentially transitioning to cryptographic implementations that provide better side-channel resistance. The vulnerability also highlights the importance of comprehensive security testing including side-channel analysis during the development lifecycle, as specified in the ISO/IEC 17825 standard for cryptographic module security testing. This weakness underscores the critical need for robust hardware security features that provide inherent protection against side-channel attacks rather than relying solely on software mitigations.