CWE-405: Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification)
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Edit Custom FilterThe 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.
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.
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,
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Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)
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.
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) Operating Systems Class: Not OS-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence) Architectures Class: Not Architecture-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence) Technologies Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence) Class: Client Server (Undetermined Prevalence) Example 1 This code listens on a port for DNS requests and sends the result to the requesting address. (bad code)
Example Language: Python
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
sock.bind( (UDP_IP,UDP_PORT) ) while true: data = sock.recvfrom(1024)
if not data: break
(requestIP, nameToResolve) = parseUDPpacket(data) record = resolveName(nameToResolve) sendResponse(requestIP,record) This code sends a DNS record to a requesting IP address. UDP allows the source IP address to be easily changed ('spoofed'), thus allowing an attacker to redirect responses to a target, which may be then be overwhelmed by the network traffic. Example 2 This function prints the contents of a specified file requested by a user. (bad code)
Example Language: PHP
function printFile($username,$filename){
//read file into string $file = file_get_contents($filename); if ($file && isOwnerOf($username,$filename)){ echo $file; }return true; else{ echo 'You are not authorized to view this file'; }return false; This code first reads a specified file into memory, then prints the file if the user is authorized to see its contents. The read of the file into memory may be resource intensive and is unnecessary if the user is not allowed to see the file anyway. Example 3 The DTD and the very brief XML below illustrate what is meant by an XML bomb. The ZERO entity contains one character, the letter A. The choice of entity name ZERO is being used to indicate length equivalent to that exponent on two, that is, the length of ZERO is 2^0. Similarly, ONE refers to ZERO twice, therefore the XML parser will expand ONE to a length of 2, or 2^1. Ultimately, we reach entity THIRTYTWO, which will expand to 2^32 characters in length, or 4 GB, probably consuming far more data than expected. (attack code)
Example Language: XML
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE MaliciousDTD [ <!ENTITY ZERO "A"> <!ENTITY ONE "&ZERO;&ZERO;"> <!ENTITY TWO "&ONE;&ONE;"> ... <!ENTITY THIRTYTWO "&THIRTYONE;&THIRTYONE;"> ]> <data>&THIRTYTWO;</data> Example 4 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 5 An adversary can cause significant resource consumption on a server by filtering the cryptographic algorithms offered by the client to the ones that are the most resource-intensive on the server side. After discovering which cryptographic algorithms are supported by the server, a malicious client can send the initial cryptographic handshake messages that contains only the resource-intensive algorithms. For some cryptographic protocols, these messages can be completely prefabricated, as the resource-intensive part of the handshake happens on the server-side first (such as TLS), rather than on the client side. In the case of cryptographic protocols where the resource-intensive part should happen on the client-side first (such as SSH), a malicious client can send a forged/precalculated computation result, which seems correct to the server, so the resource-intensive part of the handshake is going to happen on the server side. A malicious client is required to send only the initial messages of a cryptographic handshake to initiate the resource-consuming part of the cryptographic handshake. These messages are usually small, and generating them requires minimal computational effort, enabling a denial-of-service attack. An additional risk is the fact that higher key size increases the effectiveness of the attack. Cryptographic protocols where the clients have influence over the size of the used key (such as TLS 1.3 or SSH) are most at risk, as the client can enforce the highest key size supported by the server.
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.
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