CWE - CWE-674: Uncontrolled Recursion (4.4)

Weakness ID: 674

Abstraction: Class
Structure: Simple

Status: Draft

Presentation Filter:

Description

The product does not properly control the amount of recursion which takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack.

Alternate Terms

Stack Exhaustion

Relationships

The table(s) below 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	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.	691	Insufficient Control Flow Management
ParentOf	Base - 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.	776	Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion')

Relevant to the view "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (CWE-1003)

Nature	Type	ID	Name
ParentOf	Base - 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.	776	Improper Restriction of Recursive Entity References in DTDs ('XML Entity Expansion')

Modes Of Introduction

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	The uncontrolled recursion is often due to an improper or missing conditional

Applicable Platforms

The listings below show 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: Language-Independent (Undetermined Prevalence)

Common Consequences

The table below 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); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory) Resources including CPU, memory, and stack memory could be rapidly consumed or exhausted, eventually leading to an exit or crash.
Confidentiality	Technical Impact: Read Application Data In some cases, an application's interpreter might kill a process or thread that appears to be consuming too much resources, such as with PHP's memory_limit setting. When the interpreter kills the process/thread, it might report an error containing detailed information such as the application's installation path.

Demonstrative Examples

Example 1

In this example a mistake exists in the code where the exit condition contained in flg is never called. This results in the function calling itself over and over again until the stack is exhausted.

(bad code)

Example Language: C

void do_something_recursive (int flg)
{

... // Do some real work here, but the value of flg is unmodified
if (flg) { do_something_recursive (flg); } // flg is never modified so it is always TRUE - this call will continue until the stack explodes

}
int flag = 1; // Set to TRUE
do_something_recursive (flag);

Note that the only difference between the Good and Bad examples is that the recursion flag will change value and cause the recursive to return.

(good code)

Example Language: C

void do_something_recursive (int flg)
{

... // Do some real work here

// Modify value of flg on done condition

if (flg) { do_something_recursive (flg); } // returns when flg changes to 0

}
int flag = 1; // Set to TRUE
do_something_recursive (flag);

Observed Examples

Reference	Description
CVE-2007-1285	Deeply nested arrays trigger stack exhaustion.
CVE-2007-3409	Self-referencing pointers create infinite loop and resultant stack exhaustion.
CVE-2016-10707	Javascript application accidentally changes input in a way that prevents a recursive call from detecting an exit condition.
CVE-2016-3627	An attempt to recover a corrupted XML file infinite recursion protection counter was not always incremented missing the exit condition.
CVE-2019-15118	USB-audio driver's descriptor code parsing allows unlimited recursion leading to stack exhaustion.

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Implementation

Ensure an end condition will be reached under all logic conditions. The end condition may include testing against the depth of recursion and exiting with an error if the recursion goes too deep. The complexity of the end condition contributes to the effectiveness of this action.

Effectiveness: Moderate

Phase: Implementation

Increase the stack size.

Effectiveness: Limited

Note: Increasing the stack size might only be a temporary measure, since the stack typically is still not very large, and it might remain easy for attackers to cause an out-of-stack fault.

Affected Resources

Memberships

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.	730	OWASP Top Ten 2004 Category A9 - Denial of Service
MemberOf	View - a subset of CWE entries that provides a way of examining CWE content. The two main view structures are Slices (flat lists) and Graphs (containing relationships between entries).	884	CWE Cross-section
MemberOf	Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.	985	SFP Secondary Cluster: Unrestricted Consumption
MemberOf	View - a subset of CWE entries that provides a way of examining CWE content. The two main view structures are Slices (flat lists) and Graphs (containing relationships between entries).	1003	Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities
MemberOf	Category - a CWE entry that contains a set of other entries that share a common characteristic.	1129	CISQ Quality Measures (2016) - Reliability

Taxonomy Mappings

Mapped Taxonomy Name	Node ID	Fit	Mapped Node Name
OWASP Top Ten 2004	A9	CWE More Specific	Denial of Service
Software Fault Patterns	SFP13		Unrestricted Consumption
OMG ASCRM	ASCRM-CWE-674

Related Attack Patterns

CAPEC-ID	Attack Pattern Name
CAPEC-230	XML Nested Payloads
CAPEC-231	Oversized Serialized Data Payloads

References

[REF-961] Object Management Group (OMG). "Automated Source Code Reliability Measure (ASCRM)". ASCRM-CWE-674. 2016-01. <http://www.omg.org/spec/ASCRM/1.0/>.

Content History

Submissions
Submission Date	Submitter	Organization
2008-04-11	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2008-04-11
Modifications
Modification Date	Modifier	Organization
2008-07-01	Eric Dalci	Cigital
2008-07-01	updated Potential_Mitigations, Time_of_Introduction
2008-09-08	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2008-09-08	updated Common_Consequences, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2009-03-10	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2009-03-10	updated Related_Attack_Patterns
2011-03-29	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2011-03-29	updated Relationships
2011-06-01	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2011-06-01	updated Common_Consequences
2012-05-11	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2012-05-11	updated Relationships
2012-10-30	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2012-10-30	updated Potential_Mitigations
2013-02-21	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2013-02-21	updated Relationships
2014-02-18	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2014-02-18	updated Related_Attack_Patterns
2014-07-30	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2014-07-30	updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2017-11-08	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2017-11-08	updated Applicable_Platforms, Relationships
2019-01-03	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2019-01-03	updated References, Related_Attack_Patterns, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
2019-06-20	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2019-06-20	updated Related_Attack_Patterns, Relationships, Type
2020-02-24	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2020-02-24	updated Related_Attack_Patterns, Relationships
2020-12-10	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2020-12-10	updated Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Modes_of_Introduction, Observed_Examples, Potential_Mitigations, Time_of_Introduction
2021-03-15	CWE Content Team	MITRE
2021-03-15	updated Potential_Mitigations


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Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-674: Uncontrolled Recursion