Weakness · High

CWE-799: Improper Control of Interaction Frequency

What it is

The product does not properly limit the number or frequency of interactions that it has with an actor, such as the number of incoming requests.

MITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
High
Likelihood of exploit
Not rated by MITRE
Introduced during
Architecture and Design, Implementation, Operation
Exploited in the wild
No CVE in CISA's catalog

In more detail

This can allow the actor to perform actions more frequently than expected. The actor could be a human or an automated process such as a virus or bot. This could be used to cause a denial of service, compromise program logic (such as limiting humans to a single vote), or other consequences. For example, an authentication routine might not limit the number of times an attacker can guess a password. Or, a web site might conduct a poll but only expect humans to vote a maximum of once a day.

What an attacker can do

  • DoS: Resource Consumption (Other) (Availability, Access Control, Other)
  • Bypass Protection Mechanism (Availability, Access Control, Other)
  • Other (Availability, Access Control, Other)

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.

CWE-799 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.