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Logging of Excessive Data

Draft Base
Structure: Simple
Description

The product logs too much information, making log files hard to process and possibly hindering recovery efforts or forensic analysis after an attack.

Extended Description

While logging is a good practice in general, and very high levels of logging are appropriate for debugging stages of development, too much logging in a production environment might hinder a system administrator's ability to detect anomalous conditions. This can provide cover for an attacker while attempting to penetrate a system, clutter the audit trail for forensic analysis, or make it more difficult to debug problems in a production environment.
Common Consequences 3
Scope: Availability

Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU)DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

Log files can become so large that they consume excessive resources, such as disk and CPU, which can hinder the performance of the system.

Scope: Non-Repudiation

Impact: Hide Activities

Logging too much information can make the log files of less use to forensics analysts and developers when trying to diagnose a problem or recover from an attack.

Scope: Non-Repudiation

Impact: Hide Activities

If system administrators are unable to effectively process log files, attempted attacks may go undetected, possibly leading to eventual system compromise.
Potential Mitigations 3
Phase: Architecture and Design
Suppress large numbers of duplicate log messages and replace them with periodic summaries. For example, syslog may include an entry that states "last message repeated X times" when recording repeated events.
Phase: Architecture and Design
Support a maximum size for the log file that can be controlled by the administrator. If the maximum size is reached, the admin should be notified. Also, consider reducing functionality of the product. This may result in a denial-of-service to legitimate product users, but it will prevent the product from adversely impacting the entire system.
Phase: Implementation
Adjust configurations appropriately when the product is transitioned from a debug state to production.
Observed Examples 2
CVE-2007-0421server records a large amount of data to the server log when it receives malformed headers
CVE-2002-1154chain: application does not restrict access to front-end for updates, which allows attacker to fill the error log
Likelihood of Exploit

Low

Applicable Platforms
Languages:
Not Language-Specific : Undetermined
Modes of Introduction
Operation
Related Weaknesses
ChildOf: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (CWE-400)
Taxonomy Mapping
  • ISA/IEC 62443
  • ISA/IEC 62443
  • ISA/IEC 62443
  • ISA/IEC 62443