COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-409

Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)

The product does not handle or incorrectly handles a compressed input with a very high compression ratio that produces a large output.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not handle or incorrectly handles a compressed input with a very high compression ratio that produces a large output.

Extended description

An example of data amplification is a "decompression bomb," a small ZIP file that can produce a large amount of data when it is decompressed.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

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

Affected security scopes: Availability

System resources, CPU and memory, can be quickly consumed. This can lead to poor system performance or system crash.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

  • Follow secure coding guidelines for input handling and boundary checking.
  • Enforce strict security reviews and automated static analysis (SAST) checks.