COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-405

Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification)

The 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."

Abstraction

Class

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The 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."

Extended description

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.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Lifecycle phase

Operation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

DoS: AmplificationDoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

Affected security scopes: Availability

Sometimes this is a factor in "flood" attacks, but other types of amplification exist.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Architecture and Design

Architecture and design approach

Detail
An application must make resources available to a client commensurate with the client's access level.

Architecture and Design

Architecture and design approach

Detail
An application must, at all times, keep track of allocated resources and meter their usage appropriately.

System Configuration

Secure configuration approach

Detail
Consider disabling resource-intensive algorithms on the server side, such as Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

Effectiveness: High

Business requirements may prevent disabling resource-intensive algorithms.

CWE-405: Common Weakness Enumeration Entry CWE-405 · DayBreach Sözlük · DayBreach