Overview
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-56301 is a critical issue discovered in the Chipsalliance Rocket-Chip. The flaw allows bad actors to corrupt exception handling and privilege state transitions. This vulnerability poses a significant threat to any system running affected versions of the Rocket-Chip, potentially leading to system compromise or data leakage.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-56301
Severity: High (CVSS: 7.5)
Attack Vector: Local
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Impact: System compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
Share secrets securely
Ameeba is private infrastructure for communication and sensitive work built on encrypted identity instead of exposed corporate identity systems.
Passwords, credentials, confidential files, screenshots, internal discussions, sensitive AI context, and private coordination should not become exposed across ordinary communication platforms.
- • Encrypted identity
- • Private Spaces for organizations and teams
- • End-to-end encrypted chat, calls, files, and notes
- • Sensitive AI work and protected collaboration
- • Built for information that cannot leak
Our mission is to secure human work alongside AI.
Product | Affected Versions
Chipsalliance Rocket-Chip | Versions prior to commit f517abbf41abb65cea37421d3559f9739efd00a9 (2025-01-29)
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability arises from a flawed interaction between exception handling and exception return (MRET) mechanisms in the Control and Status Register (CSR) logic. When an MRET instruction is executed in machine mode without being in an exception state, an Instruction Access Fault may be triggered. This results in both the exception handling logic and the exception return logic activating simultaneously, leading to conflicting updates to the control and status registers. Consequently, this flaw can be exploited by an attacker to corrupt exception handling and privilege state transitions.
Conceptual Example Code
The following pseudocode demonstrates how the vulnerability could be exploited:
// Enter machine mode without being in an exception state
enterMachineMode();
// Execute MRET instruction
executeMRET();
// The above triggers an Instruction Access Fault, activating both
// the exception handling logic and the exception return logic simultaneouslyThe above steps result in conflicting updates to the control and status registers, thereby corrupting exception handling and privilege state transitions. An attacker could potentially utilize this flaw to compromise the system or leak data.
Mitigation
Users are advised to apply the vendor patch immediately once available. In the meantime, the use of a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can serve as temporary mitigation.