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Common Weakness Enumeration

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Home > CWE List > CWE-1229: Creation of Emergent Resource (4.19)  
ID

CWE-1229: Creation of Emergent Resource

Weakness ID: 1229
Vulnerability Mapping: ALLOWED This CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities in limited situations requiring careful review (with careful review of mapping notes)
Abstraction: Class Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource.
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+ Description
The product manages resources or behaves in a way that indirectly creates a new, distinct resource that can be used by attackers in violation of the intended policy.
+ Extended Description

A product is only expected to behave in a way that was specifically intended by the developer. Resource allocation and management is expected to be performed explicitly by the associated code. However, in systems with complex behavior, the product might indirectly produce new kinds of resources that were never intended in the original design. For example, a covert channel is a resource that was never explicitly intended by the developer, but it is useful to attackers. "Parasitic computing," while not necessarily malicious in nature, effectively tricks a product into performing unintended computations on behalf of another party.

+ Common Consequences
Section HelpThis table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
Impact Details

Varies by Context

Scope: Other

+ Relationships
Section Help This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user may want to explore.
+ Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (View-1000)
Nature Type ID Name
ChildOf Pillar Pillar - a weakness that is the most abstract type of weakness and represents a theme for all class/base/variant weaknesses related to it. A Pillar is different from a Category as a Pillar is still technically a type of weakness that describes a mistake, while a Category represents a common characteristic used to group related things. 664 Improper Control of a Resource Through its Lifetime
ParentOf Class Class - a weakness that is described in a very abstract fashion, typically independent of any specific language or technology. More specific than a Pillar Weakness, but more general than a Base Weakness. Class level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 1 or 2 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, and resource. 514 Covert Channel
+ Modes Of Introduction
Section HelpThe different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.
Phase Note
Implementation
Architecture and Design
+ Applicable Platforms
Section HelpThis listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.
Languages

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Operating Systems

Class: Not OS-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

Architectures

Class: Not Architecture-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence)

+ Demonstrative Examples

Example 1


In this example, the attacker observes how long an authentication takes when the user types in the correct password.

When the attacker tries their own values, they can first try strings of various length. When they find a string of the right length, the computation will take a bit longer, because the for loop will run at least once. Additionally, with this code, the attacker can possibly learn one character of the password at a time, because when they guess the first character right, the computation will take longer than a wrong guesses. Such an attack can break even the most sophisticated password with a few hundred guesses.

(bad code)
Example Language: Python 
def validate_password(actual_pw, typed_pw):
if len(actual_pw) <> len(typed_pw):
return 0

for i in len(actual_pw):
if actual_pw[i] <> typed_pw[i]:
return 0

return 1

Note that in this example, the actual password must be handled in constant time as far as the attacker is concerned, even if the actual password is of an unusual length. This is one reason why it is good to use an algorithm that, among other things, stores a seeded cryptographic one-way hash of the password, then compare the hashes, which will always be of the same length.



+ Weakness Ordinalities
Ordinality Description
Resultant
(where the weakness is typically related to the presence of some other weaknesses)
+ Memberships
Section HelpThis MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources.
Nature Type ID Name
MemberOf CategoryCategory - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic. 1416 Comprehensive Categorization: Resource Lifecycle Management
+ Vulnerability Mapping Notes
Usage ALLOWED-WITH-REVIEW
(this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities in limited situations requiring careful review)
Reason Abstraction

Rationale

This CWE entry is a Class and might have Base-level children that would be more appropriate

Comments

Examine children of this entry to see if there is a better fit
+ References
[REF-1049] Wikipedia. "Parasitic computing".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_computing>.
+ Content History
+ Submissions
Submission Date Submitter Organization
2020-01-22
(CWE 4.0, 2020-02-24)
CWE Content Team MITRE
+ Modifications
Modification Date Modifier Organization
2025-12-11
(CWE 4.19, 2025-12-11)
CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Common_Consequences, Demonstrative_Examples, Time_of_Introduction, Weakness_Ordinalities
2023-06-29 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Mapping_Notes
2023-04-27 CWE Content Team MITRE
updated Relationships
Page Last Updated: December 11, 2025