CAPEC-128

Standard Abstraction Level
Meta — Very abstract, high-level category
Standard — Specific enough to understand
Detailed — Tied to specific technique Draft MITRE CAPEC Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development
Incomplete — Partially defined
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CAPEC Severity: Medium
Integer Attacks

Description

An attacker takes advantage of the structure of integer variables to cause these variables to assume values that are not expected by an application. For example, adding one to the largest positive integer in a signed integer variable results in a negative number. Negative numbers may be illegal in an application and the application may prevent an attacker from providing them directly, but the application may not consider that adding two positive numbers can create a negative number do to the structure of integer storage formats.

Prerequisites

The target application must have an integer variable for which only some of the possible integer values are expected by the application and where there are no checks on the value of the variable before use.

The attacker must be able to manipulate the targeted integer variable such that normal operations result in non-standard values due to the storage structure of integers.