COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-799

Improper Control of Interaction Frequency

The product does not properly limit the number or frequency of interactions that it has with an actor, such as the number of incoming requests.

Abstraction

Class

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not properly limit the number or frequency of interactions that it has with an actor, such as the number of incoming requests.

Extended description

This can allow the actor to perform actions more frequently than expected. The actor could be a human or an automated process such as a virus or bot. This could be used to cause a denial of service, compromise program logic (such as limiting humans to a single vote), or other consequences. For example, an authentication routine might not limit the number of times an attacker can guess a password. Or, a web site might conduct a poll but only expect humans to vote a maximum of once a day.

Terminology

Alternate terms and usages

Insufficient anti-automation

The term "insufficient anti-automation" focuses primarly on non-human actors such as viruses or bots, but the scope of this CWE entry is broader.

Brute force

Vulnerabilities that can be targeted using brute force attacks are often symptomatic of this weakness.

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: Resource Consumption (Other)Bypass Protection MechanismOther

Affected security scopes: Availability, Access Control, Other

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.