COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-606

Unchecked Input for Loop Condition

The product does not properly check inputs that are used for loop conditions, potentially leading to a denial of service or other consequences because of excessive looping.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not properly check inputs that are used for loop conditions, potentially leading to a denial of service or other consequences because of excessive looping.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)

Affected security scopes: Availability

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Implementation

Implementation-phase defence

Detail
Do not use user-controlled data for loop conditions.

Implementation

Implementation-phase defence

Detail
Perform input validation.

Verification

How is it detected?

Automated Static Analysis

High
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.)