Weakness · Medium
CWE-409: Improper Handling of Highly Compressed Data (Data Amplification)
What it is
The product does not handle or incorrectly handles a compressed input with a very high compression ratio that produces a large output.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design, Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
An example of data amplification is a "decompression bomb," a small ZIP file that can produce a large amount of data when it is decompressed.
What an attacker can do
- DoS: Amplification (Availability)
- DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart (Availability)
- DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU) (Availability)
- DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory) (Availability)
How to prevent it
MITRE lists no specific mitigation for this weakness. Treat it like its parent weaknesses below: validate input, keep the design simple and review the code where it could appear.
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.