CAPEC-229

Detailed 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 Likelihood: High Severity: High
Serialized Data Parameter Blowup

Description

This attack exploits certain serialized data parsers (e.g., XML, YAML, etc.) which manage data in an inefficient manner. The attacker crafts an serialized data file with multiple configuration parameters in the same dataset. In a vulnerable parser, this results in a denial of service condition where CPU resources are exhausted because of the parsing algorithm. The weakness being exploited is tied to parser implementation and not language specific.

Prerequisites

The server accepts input in the form of serialized data and is using a parser with a runtime longer than O(n) for the insertion of a new configuration parameter in the data container.(examples are .NET framework 1.0 and 1.1)

Mitigations

This attack may be mitigated completely by using a parser that is not using a vulnerable container.

Mitigation may limit the number of configuration parameters per dataset.