Improper Control of Interaction Frequency

Incomplete Class

Structure: Simple

Description

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.

Extended Description

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.

Common Consequences 1

Scope: AvailabilityAccess ControlOther

Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)Bypass Protection MechanismOther

Demonstrative Examples 1

In the following code a username and password is read from a socket and an attempt is made to authenticate the username and password. The code will continuously checked the socket for a username and password until it has been authenticated.

Code Example:Bad
C
c

This code does not place any restriction on the number of authentication attempts made. There should be a limit on the number of authentication attempts made to prevent brute force attacks as in the following example code.

Code Example:Good
C
c

Observed Examples 1

CVE-2002-1876Mail server allows attackers to prevent other users from accessing mail by sending large number of rapid requests.

References 1

Insufficient Anti-automation

Web Application Security Consortium

http://projects.webappsec.org/Insufficient+Anti-automation

ID: REF-731

Applicable Platforms

Languages:

Not Language-Specific : Undetermined

Modes of Introduction

Architecture and Design

Implementation

Operation

Alternate Terms

Insufficient anti-automation

The term "insufficient anti-automation" focuses primarly on non-human actors such as viruses or bots, but the scope of this CWE entry is broader.

Brute force

Vulnerabilities that can be targeted using brute force attacks are often symptomatic of this weakness.

Related Weaknesses

ChildOf:

Insufficient Control Flow Management (CWE-691)

Taxonomy Mapping

WASC