CWE-834

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
Excessive Iteration

Description

The product performs an iteration or loop without sufficiently limiting the number of times that the loop is executed.

If the iteration can be influenced by an attacker, this weakness could allow attackers to consume excessive resources such as CPU or memory. In many cases, a loop does not need to be infinite in order to cause enough resource consumption to adversely affect the product or its host system; it depends on the amount of resources consumed per iteration.

Consequences

Availability — DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU), DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory), DoS: Amplification, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Excessive looping will cause unexpected consumption of resources, such as CPU cycles or memory. The product's operation may slow down, or cause a long time to respond. If limited resources such as memory are consumed for each iteration, the loop may eventually cause a crash or program exit due to exhaustion of resources, such as an out-of-memory error.

Detection

Dynamic Analysis with Manual Results Interpretation

According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Cost effective for partial coverage: Fuzz Tester Framework-based Fuzzer Forced Path Execution

Manual Static Analysis - Source Code

According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Cost effective for partial coverage: Focused Manual Spotcheck - Focused manual analysis of source Manual Source Code Review (not inspections)

Automated Static Analysis - Source Code

According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Highly cost effective: Context-configured Source Code Weakness Analyzer

Architecture or Design Review

According to SOAR [REF-1479], the following detection techniques may be useful: Highly cost effective: Inspection (IEEE 1028 standard) (can apply to requirements, design, source code, etc.)