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CWE - 400 : Uncontrolled Resource Consumption ('Resource Exhaustion')

CWE Definition http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/400.html
Number of vulnerabilities: 1342
Description The software does not properly restrict the size or amount of resources that are requested or influenced by an actor, which can be used to consume more resources than intended.Limited resources include memory, file system storage, database connection pool entries, or CPU. If an attacker can trigger the allocation of these limited resources, but the number or size of the resources is not controlled, then the attacker could cause a denial of service that consumes all available resources. This would prevent valid users from accessing the software, and it could potentially have an impact on the surrounding environment. For example, a memory exhaustion attack against an application could slow down the application as well as its host operating system.
Background Details
Other Notes Database queries that take a long time to process are good DoS targets. An attacker would have to write a few lines of Perl code to generate enough traffic to exceed the site's ability to keep up. This would effectively prevent authorized users from using the site at all. Resources can be exploited simply by ensuring that the target machine must do much more work and consume more resources in order to service a request than the attacker must do to initiate a request.

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