CWE-834 - Excessive Iteration

CWE ID:

CWE-834

Abstraction:Class
Structure:Simple
Status:Incomplete

Release Date:2011-03-30
Latest Modification Date:2024-02-29

Weakness Name

Excessive Iteration

Description

The product performs an iteration or loop without sufficiently limiting the number of times that the loop is executed.

If the iteration can be influenced by an attacker, this weakness could allow attackers to consume excessive resources such as CPU or memory. In many cases, a loop does not need to be infinite in order to cause enough resource consumption to adversely affect the product or its host system; it depends on the amount of resources consumed per iteration.

Common Consequences

Scope: Availability

Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU), DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory), DoS: Amplification, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Notes: Excessive looping will cause unexpected consumption of resources, such as CPU cycles or memory. The product's operation may slow down, or cause a long time to respond. If limited resources such as memory are consumed for each iteration, the loop may eventually cause a crash or program exit due to exhaustion of resources, such as an out-of-memory error.