COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-406

Insufficient Control of Network Message Volume (Network Amplification)

The product does not sufficiently monitor or control transmitted network traffic volume, so that an actor can cause the product to transmit more traffic than should be allowed for that actor.

Abstraction

Class

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not sufficiently monitor or control transmitted network traffic volume, so that an actor can cause the product to transmit more traffic than should be allowed for that actor.

Extended description

In the absence of a policy to restrict asymmetric resource consumption, the application or system cannot distinguish between legitimate transmissions and traffic intended to serve as an amplifying attack on target systems. Systems can often be configured to restrict the amount of traffic sent out on behalf of a client, based on the client's origin or access level. This is usually defined in a resource allocation policy. In the absence of a mechanism to keep track of transmissions, the system or application can be easily abused to transmit asymmetrically greater traffic than the request or client should be permitted to.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Operation

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

If the application uses UDP, then it could potentially be subject to spoofing attacks that use the inherent weaknesses of UDP to perform traffic amplification, although this problem can exist in other protocols or contexts.

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

DoS: AmplificationDoS: Crash, Exit, or RestartDoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

Affected security scopes: Availability

System resources can be quickly consumed leading to poor application performance or system crash. This may affect network performance and could be used to attack other systems and applications relying on network performance.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Architecture and Design

Separation of Privilege

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

Policy

Policy aşaması savunması

Detail
Define a clear policy for network resource allocation and consumption.

Implementation

Implementation-phase defence

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

Verification

How is it detected?

Automated Static Analysis

Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)