Weakness · Medium

CWE-606: Unchecked Input for Loop Condition

What it is

The product does not properly check inputs that are used for loop conditions, potentially leading to a denial of service or other consequences because of excessive looping.

MITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
Medium
Likelihood of exploit
Not rated by MITRE
Introduced during
Implementation
Exploited in the wild
No CVE in CISA's catalog

What an attacker can do

  • DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU) (Availability)

How to prevent it

Implementation

  • Do not use user-controlled data for loop conditions.
  • Perform input validation.

How to find it

  • Automated Static Analysis. 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.)

CWE-606 on MITRE's CWE site

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Source: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.