Vulnerability Mapping:
ALLOWEDThis CWE ID may be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities Abstraction: BaseBase - a weakness that is still mostly independent of a resource or technology, but with sufficient details to provide specific methods for detection and prevention. Base level weaknesses typically describe issues in terms of 2 or 3 of the following dimensions: behavior, property, technology, language, and resource.
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Description
The product uses a regular expression with an inefficient, possibly exponential worst-case computational complexity that consumes excessive CPU cycles.
Extended Description
Some regular expression engines have a feature called "backtracking". If the token cannot match, the engine "backtracks" to a position that may result in a different token that can match. Backtracking becomes a weakness if all of these conditions are met:
The number of possible backtracking attempts are exponential relative to the length of the input.
The input can fail to match the regular expression.
The input can be long enough.
Attackers can create crafted inputs that intentionally cause the regular expression to use excessive backtracking in a way that causes the CPU consumption to spike.
Alternate Terms
ReDoS:
ReDoS is an abbreviation of "Regular expression Denial of Service".
Regular Expression Denial of Service:
While this term is attack-focused, this is commonly used to describe the weakness.
Catastrophic backtracking:
This term is used to describe the behavior of the regular expression as a negative technical impact.
Common Consequences
This 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.
Scope
Impact
Likelihood
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)
High
Potential Mitigations
Phase: Architecture and Design
Use regular expressions that do not support backtracking, e.g. by removing nested quantifiers.
Effectiveness: High
Note: This is one of the few effective solutions when using user-provided regular expressions.
Phase: System Configuration
Set backtracking limits in the configuration of the regular expression implementation, such as PHP's pcre.backtrack_limit. Also consider limits on execution time for the process.
Effectiveness: Moderate
Phase: Implementation
Do not use regular expressions with untrusted input. If regular expressions must be used, avoid using backtracking in the expression.
Effectiveness: High
Phase: Implementation
Limit the length of the input that the regular expression will process.
Effectiveness: Moderate
Relationships
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" (CWE-1000)
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
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.
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 "Software Development" (CWE-699)
Nature
Type
ID
Name
MemberOf
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.
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 "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (CWE-1003)
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
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.
The 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
A RegEx can be easy to create and read using unbounded matching characters, but the programmer might not consider the risk of excessive backtracking.
Applicable Platforms
This 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)
Likelihood Of Exploit
High
Demonstrative Examples
Example 1
This example attempts to check if an input string is a "sentence" [REF-1164].
(bad code)
Example Language: JavaScript
var test_string = "Bad characters: $@#";
var bad_pattern = /^(\w+\s?)*$/i;
var result = test_string.search(bad_pattern);
The regular expression has a vulnerable backtracking clause inside (\w+\s?)*$ which can be triggered to cause a Denial of Service by processing particular phrases.
To fix the backtracking problem, backtracking is removed with the ?= portion of the expression which changes it to a lookahead and the \2 which prevents the backtracking. The modified example is:
(good code)
Example Language: JavaScript
var test_string = "Bad characters: $@#";
var good_pattern = /^((?=(\w+))\2\s?)*$/i;
var result = test_string.search(good_pattern);
Note that [REF-1164] has a more thorough (and lengthy) explanation of everything going on within the RegEx.
Example 2
This example attempts to check if an input string is a "sentence" and is modified for Perl [REF-1164].
(bad code)
Example Language: Perl
my $test_string = "Bad characters: \$\@\#";
my $bdrslt = $test_string;
$bdrslt =~ /^(\w+\s?)*$/i;
The regular expression has a vulnerable backtracking clause inside (\w+\s?)*$ which can be triggered to cause a Denial of Service by processing particular phrases.
To fix the backtracking problem, backtracking is removed with the ?= portion of the expression which changes it to a lookahead and the \2 which prevents the backtracking. The modified example is:
(good code)
Example Language: Perl
my $test_string = "Bad characters: \$\@\#";
my $gdrslt = $test_string;
$gdrslt =~ /^((?=(\w+))\2\s?)*$/i;
Note that [REF-1164] has a more thorough (and lengthy) explanation of everything going on within the RegEx.
Markdown parser uses inefficient regex when processing a message, allowing users to cause CPU consumption and delay preventing processing of other messages.
This 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
Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.
(this CWE ID could be used to map to real-world vulnerabilities)
Reason: Acceptable-Use
Rationale:
This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Comments:
Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.
[REF-1166] James C. Davis, Christy A. Coghlan, Francisco Servant
and Dongyoon Lee. "The Impact of Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in Practice: An Empirical Study at the Ecosystem Scale". 2018-08-01.
<https://fservant.github.io/papers/Davis_Coghlan_Servant_Lee_ESECFSE18.pdf>. URL validated: 2023-04-07.
Description
This 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.
Relevant to the view "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (CWE-1003)
