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Capec-131 Detail

Resource Leak Exposure

Meta Software Likelihood: Medium Typical Severity: Medium

Threats: T77 T289

Description

An adversary utilizes a resource leak on the target to deplete the quantity of the resource available to service legitimate requests.

Extended Description

Resource leaks most often come in the form of memory leaks where memory is allocated but never released after it has served its purpose, however, theoretically, any other resource that can be reserved can be targeted if the target fails to release the reservation when the reserved resource block is no longer needed. In this attack, the adversary determines what activity results in leaked resources and then triggers that activity on the target. Since some leaks may be small, this may require a large number of requests by the adversary. However, this attack differs from a flooding attack in that the rate of requests is generally not significant. This is because the lost resources due to the leak accumulate until the target is reset, usually by restarting it. Thus, a resource-poor adversary who would be unable to flood the target can still utilize this attack. Resource depletion through leak differs from resource depletion through allocation in that, in the former, the adversary may not be able to control the size of each leaked allocation, but instead allows the leak to accumulate until it is large enough to affect the target's performance. When depleting resources through allocation, the allocated resource may eventually be released by the target so the attack relies on making sure that the allocation size itself is prohibitive of normal operations by the target.
External ID Source Link Description
CAPEC-131 capec https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/131.html
CWE-404 cwe http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/404.html
T1499 ATTACK https://attack.mitre.org/wiki/Technique/T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service
10 WASC http://projects.webappsec.org/Denial-of-Service Denial of Service

Not present

  1. The target must have a resource leak that the adversary can repeatedly trigger.
  1. None: No specialized resources are required to execute this type of attack.

Not present

Availability
Unreliable Execution (A successful resource leak exposure attack compromises the availability of the target system's services.)
Resource Consumption (A successful resource leak exposure attack compromises the availability of the target system's services.)

Not present