Weakness · Medium
CWE-920: Improper Restriction of Power Consumption
What it is
The product operates in an environment in which power is a limited resource that cannot be automatically replenished, but the product does not properly restrict the amount of power that its operation consumes.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Architecture and Design
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
In environments such as embedded or mobile devices, power can be a limited resource such as a battery, which cannot be automatically replenished by the product itself, and the device might not always be directly attached to a reliable power source. If the product uses too much power too quickly, then this could cause the device (and subsequently, the product) to stop functioning until power is restored, or increase the financial burden on the device owner because of increased power costs. Normal operation of an application will consume power. However, in some cases, an attacker could cause the application to consume more power than intended, using components such as: Display CPU Disk I/O GPS Sound Microphone USB interface
What an attacker can do
- DoS: Resource Consumption (Other) (Availability)
- DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart (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.