COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONIncomplete

CWE-833

Deadlock

The product contains multiple threads or executable segments that are waiting for each other to release a necessary lock, resulting in deadlock.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product contains multiple threads or executable segments that are waiting for each other to release a necessary lock, resulting in deadlock.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Affected security scopes: Availability

Each thread of execution will "hang" and prevent tasks from completing. In some cases, CPU consumption may occur if a lock check occurs in a tight loop.

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.

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.)