CWE-405

Class Abstraction Level
Pillar — Highest-level weakness category
Class — Abstract, language-independent
Base — Specific enough to detect
Variant — Tied to specific technology
Compound — Requires multiple weaknesses Incomplete MITRE CWE Status
Stable — Fully reviewed and complete
Draft — Under development, may change
Incomplete — Partially defined by MITRE
Deprecated — No longer recommended
Obsolete — Replaced by another CWE
Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification)

Description

The product does not properly control situations in which an adversary can cause the product to consume or produce excessive resources without requiring the adversary to invest equivalent work or otherwise prove authorization, i.e., the adversary's influence is "asymmetric."

This can lead to poor performance due to "amplification" of resource consumption, typically in a non-linear fashion. This situation is worsened if the product allows malicious users or attackers to consume more resources than their access level permits.

Consequences

Availability — DoS: Amplification, DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU), DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory), DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

Sometimes this is a factor in "flood" attacks, but other types of amplification exist.

Mitigations

Phase: Architecture and Design

An application must make resources available to a client commensurate with the client's access level.

Phase: Architecture and Design

An application must, at all times, keep track of allocated resources and meter their usage appropriately.

Phase: System Configuration

Consider disabling resource-intensive algorithms on the server side, such as Diffie-Hellman key exchange.