Weakness (CWE)
CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
The product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.
How to prevent it (8 mitigations)
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Requirements
Clearly specify the minimum and maximum expectations for capabilities, and dictate which behaviors are acceptable when resource allocation reaches limits.
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Architecture and Design
Limit the amount of resources that are accessible to unprivileged users. Set per-user limits for resources. Allow the system administrator to define these limits. Be careful to avoid CWE-410.
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Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place, and it will help the administrator to identify who is committing the abuse. The login application should be protected against DoS attacks as much as possible. Limiting the database access, perhaps by caching result sets, can help minimize the resources expended. To further limit the potential for a DoS attack, consider tracking the rate of requests received from users and blocking requests that exceed a defined rate threshold.
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Implementation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, "boat" may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as "red" or "blue."
Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code's environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.
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Architecture and Design
For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks entirely. Then, these modified values would be submitted to the server.
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Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:
- recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, typically by using increasing time delays
- uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.
The second solution can be difficult to effectively institute -- and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply requires more resources on the part of the attacker.
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Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
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Architecture and Design, Implementation
If the program must fail, ensure that it fails gracefully (fails closed). There may be a temptation to simply let the program fail poorly in cases such as low memory conditions, but an attacker may be able to assert control before the software has fully exited. Alternately, an uncontrolled failure could cause cascading problems with other downstream components; for example, the program could send a signal to a downstream process so the process immediately knows that a problem has occurred and has a better chance of recovery.
Ensure that all failures in resource allocation place the system into a safe posture.
Source: MITRE CWE-770
1,160 results · Clear filters · Feed
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Medium 5.5
FFmpeg through 9.0.2 Memory Exhaustion via av1_frame_merge Bitstream Filter
FFmpeg through 9.0.2 contains an unbounded memory allocation vulnerability in the av1_frame_merge bitstream filter that allows attackers to exhaust memory by never sending a temporal delimiter OBU. Attackers can supply a crafted .obu file opened by the AV1 OB…
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Medium 4.7
FFmpeg through 9.0.2 CPU Exhaustion via dts2pts Bitstream Filter
FFmpeg through 9.0.2 contains an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in the dts2pts bitstream filter that allows attackers to exhaust CPU through unbounded per-packet POC node allocation. Attackers can supply a crafted H.264 packet with many slice…
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Medium 5.5
FFmpeg 8.1 through 9.0.2 EXIF Parser Memory Exhaustion via Overlapping Tags
FFmpeg 8.1 through 9.0.2 contains a memory exhaustion vulnerability in the libavcodec/exif.c parser that allows attackers to amplify allocations by pointing many IFD entries at overlapping payloads. Attackers can embed a small crafted EXIF block in TIFF, JPEG…
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Medium 6.5
Multiple security vulnerabilities are addressed with IBM Process Mining Interim Fix for October 2026
IBM Process Mining 2.0.0 through 2.2.1 could allow an authenticated attacker to cause a denial of service through insufficient rate limiting of email notifications, resulting in excessive emails being sent to targeted recipients.
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Medium 6.5
Vikunja before 2.7.1 Memory Exhaustion DoS via Trello, Todoist and Microsoft To Do Migrations
Vikunja before 2.7.1 allocates memory without limits in its Trello, Todoist and Microsoft To Do migration importers, which buffer remote attachment downloads and API responses in memory without size caps. Authenticated users can start a migration that referen…
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Medium 6.5
Vikunja before 2.7.1 Memory Exhaustion via Unbounded Avatar Size Cache
Vikunja before 2.7.1 contains an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability that allows authenticated users to exhaust server memory by requesting avatars at many distinct sizes. Attackers can upload a noisy avatar and fetch it at each size up to 1024, c…
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Medium 6.5
Vikunja before 2.7.1 Memory Exhaustion DoS via WeKan and Vikunja-File Imports
Vikunja before 2.7.1 contains a denial of service vulnerability that allows authenticated users to exhaust API process memory by uploading WeKan or vikunja-file imports with no item-count cap. Attackers can submit a ~22 MB WeKan JSON with hundreds of thousand…
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Medium 4.3
Vikunja before 2.7.1 Resource Exhaustion via Vikunja-File ZIP Import
Vikunja before 2.7.1 contains a resource exhaustion vulnerability in the vikunja-file ZIP importer that allows authenticated users to consume CPU and memory by uploading archives with excessive entries. Attackers can upload export ZIPs containing many empty o…
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Medium 4.3
Vikunja before 2.7.1 Resource Exhaustion via CalDAV VTODO RELATED-TO Entries
Vikunja before 2.7.1 contains an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability that allows authenticated CalDAV clients to create unbounded dummy tasks by sending VTODOs with thousands of RELATED-TO properties. Attackers can repeat unknown related UIDs in a…
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Medium 4.3
Vikunja before 2.7.1 Denial of Service via Unbounded Kanban Bucket Count
Vikunja before 2.7.1 contains an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability that allows project writers or view admins to create unlimited kanban buckets due to missing count caps. Attackers can create thousands of buckets so every kanban read runs a tas…
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Medium 5.9
JSON-java: JSONTokener Has Unbounded Numeric String Resource-Exhaustion DoS
JSON-java is a reference implementation of a JSON package in Java. From version 20150729 through 20260522, JSONTokener.nextSimpleValue can accumulate unbounded numeric tokens before JSONObject.stringToNumber passes them to BigInteger or BigDecimal conversion …
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Medium 6.5
Hisense VIDAA Smart TV Unauthenticated DoS via SetAVTransportURI
Hisense VIDAA Smart TV firmware V0000.01.00a.P0220 contains an unauthenticated denial-of-service vulnerability in the UPnP/DLNA AVTransport SOAP service that allows LAN-adjacent attackers to freeze the entire television software layer by sending a crafted Set…
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Medium 4.9
Authenticated remote denial of service through unbounded zlib decompression in storeAnalysisStatistics
When an operator enables store.analysis_statistics_dir, a network client with PRODUCT_STORE permission for a product can call that product's storeAnalysisStatistics Thrift-over-HTTP method. CodeChecker 6.29.0 decodes the attacker-controlled Base64 string and …
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Medium 6.3
Pillow: EPS load(scale) lets Ghostscript render past the decompression bomb limit
Pillow is a Python imaging library. In versions 2.3.0 through 12.3.0, EPS rendering does not validate the scaled image dimensions before invoking Ghostscript. Applications that process untrusted EPS or PostScript files using an application-selected scale grea…
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Medium 6.5
anacrolix/torrent through 1.61.0 Memory Exhaustion via Unbounded HTTP Tracker Response
anacrolix/torrent through 1.61.0 contains a memory exhaustion vulnerability in the tracker/http package that allows malicious trackers to crash clients by returning unbounded responses. Attackers controlling an HTTP tracker in a torrent file or magnet link ca…
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Medium 6.5
Zulip: Missing content-length limit on POST /messages/render allows denial-of-service via oversized requests
Zulip is an open-source team collaboration tool. In Zulip Server versions through 12.1, the authenticated POST /messages/render endpoint renders the content parameter without enforcing the normal message length limit used by message send and edit operations. …
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Medium 6.5
CGI versions before 5.00 for Perl allow memory, CPU and disk exhaustion via missing or unenforced request size, parameter and upload limits
CGI versions before 5.00 for Perl allow memory, CPU and disk exhaustion via missing or unenforced request size, parameter and upload limits. $CGI::POST_MAX defaults to no limit, and when set is not enforced for chunked multipart bodies or for the boundary lin…
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Medium 4.3
Tanium addressed an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in Threat Response.
Tanium addressed an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in Threat Response.
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Medium 6.5
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in APM Server Leading to Denial of Service
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) in APM Server can lead to denial of service via Oversized Serialized Data Payloads (CAPEC-231). An attacker who can send OpenTelemetry (OTLP) data to APM Server over HTTP can cause APM Server to e…
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Medium 6.5
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in Elasticsearch Leading to Denial of Service
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) in Elasticsearch can lead to denial of service via a specially crafted input value that is processed by an affected phonetic encoder of the analysis-phonetic plugin. An authenticated user with per…
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Medium 5.3
Potential memory exhaustion in MultiPartParser via base64-encoded file upload
An issue was discovered in Django 6.1 before 6.1.3, 6.0.4 before 6.0.10, and 5.2.13 before 5.2.19. `django.http.multipartparser.MultiPartParser` is subject to excessive memory consumption when processing multipart file uploads with base64 `Content-Transfer-En…
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Medium 5.9
Heap exhaustion via unbounded simple string or bulk string allocation in Vert.x Redis client
In Eclipse Vert.x versions [4.0.0, 4.5.35] or [5.0.0, 5.2.2], when a malicious server keeps sending bytes on an EOL-terminated line (not length-prefixed, for example a simple string [1]), we'll keep growing the buffer without bounds, eventually leading to an …
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Medium 6.5
FreeRDP 3.0.0 before 3.32.2 Proxy Memory Exhaustion via DVC Reassembly
FreeRDP from 3.0.0 before 3.32.2 contains an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability in the proxy that lets connected clients retain heap memory via intercepted DVC message reassembly. Attackers can declare a large DATA_FIRST length and keep sending f…
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Medium 4.3
FreeRDP before 3.32.2 Memory Exhaustion via Serial RDPDR Device Control
FreeRDP before 3.32.2 fails to cap the OutputBufferLength in serial device-control IRP requests, allowing malicious servers to trigger excessive memory allocation. Attackers running a server with serial redirection can send an IRP_MJ_DEVICE_CONTROL request wi…
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Medium 4.3
FreeRDP before 3.32.2 Denial of Service via Malformed Drive IRP
FreeRDP before 3.32.2 contains a denial of service vulnerability where a malformed drive DEVICE_IOREQUEST with a truncated IRP_MJ_CREATE body silently kills the drive worker. A malicious RDP server can send such an IRP then post further requests that accumula…
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Medium 4.3
FreeRDP before 3.32.2 Memory Exhaustion via RD Gateway Packet Length
FreeRDP before 3.32.2 contains a memory allocation vulnerability in rdg_receive_packet that allows a malicious RD Gateway to force a 2 GiB client allocation before tunnel authentication. Attackers can send an eight-byte RDG header declaring packet length 0x7F…
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Medium 6.5
FreeRDP 3.0.0 before 3.32.2 Uncapped Memory Allocation via DRDYNVC DATA_FIRST
FreeRDP from 3.0.0 before 3.32.2 contains an uncontrolled resource allocation vulnerability that allows malicious RDP servers to force large client allocations through the DRDYNVC DATA_FIRST Length field. Attackers can declare lengths up to 4,294,967,295 byte…
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Medium 6.9
Vulnerability due to a lack of request limits in Alosuite’s password recovery functionality.
Vulnerability due to a lack of request limits in Alosuite’s password recovery functionality. The ‘/Account/resetPwd’ endpoint does not enforce adequate restrictions on the number or frequency of password reset requests sent for a single account. As a result, …
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Medium 5.3
WPGraphQL before 2.24.1 Email Flooding via Aliased sendPasswordResetEmail Mutations
WPGraphQL before 2.24.1 contains a missing rate limiting vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers to flood password reset emails by aliasing the sendPasswordResetEmail mutation. Attackers can send one HTTP request with many aliases, bypassing batch…
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Medium 5.3
WPGraphQL Smart Cache before 2.3.3 Unbounded Persisted Query Storage DoS
WPGraphQL Smart Cache before 2.3.3 contains an uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability that allows unauthenticated attackers to persist unlimited query documents via the Automatic Persisted Query handler. Attackers can send distinct queries with match…
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Medium 4.3
Examples for Developers - Less critical - Allocation of resources without limits or throttling - SA-CONTRIB-2026-215
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in Drupal Examples for Developers allows Excessive Allocation. This issue affects Examples for Developers versions: from 0.0.0 to 4.0.7.
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Medium 6.5
Bitcoin Core prior to 29.5, 30.4, 31.2 and 32.1 is vulnerable to an OOM issue.
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Medium 6.2
Wasmtime before 36.0.18, 37.0.0 before 48.0.6, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.3 Unbounded Memory Growth via Component-Model Resource Handles
Wasmtime before 36.0.18, 37.0.0 before 48.0.6, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.3 caps component-model resource handle tables only per component instance and does not charge handle allocations to any ResourceLimiter or StoreLimits. A malicious guest can repeatedly call…
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Medium 6.5
Langflow OSS is affected by multiple vulnerabilities
IBM Langflow OSS 1.0.0 through 1.12.4 could allow a remote authenticated attacker to cause a denial of service due to allocation of resources without limits or throttling.
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Medium 5.9
flat through 6.0.1 Denial of Service via unflatten() Numeric Array Index Keys
flat through 6.0.1 contains an uncontrolled resource allocation vulnerability in unflatten() that allows attackers to create huge sparse arrays via unbounded numeric keys. Attackers can supply flattened keys such as a.4294967294, causing iteration with forEac…
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Medium 6.5
HTTP::Body versions before 1.23_01 for Perl allow memory and temporary file exhaustion via an unlimited number of form fields and multipart parts
HTTP::Body versions before 1.23_01 for Perl allow memory and temporary file exhaustion via an unlimited number of form fields and multipart parts. The urlencoded parser splits the whole body on its separators at once, creating one scalar per separator before …
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Medium 6.5
Apache Kafka: PushTelemetry (KIP-714) metrics payloads are decompressed without a size limit, allowing a broker out-of-memory denial of service
The broker-side PushTelemetry API (KIP-714) validates only the compressed size of a client's metrics payload against telemetry.max.bytes (default 1 MB) before decompressing it. ClientTelemetryUtils.decompress() then decompresses the payload with no limit on t…
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Medium 5.3
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain, Feature Release versions 7.7.1.0 through 8.8, LTS2024 release versions 7.13.1.0 through …
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Medium 5.9
LibreSSL ocspcheck through 4.4.0 Memory Exhaustion via Unbounded OCSP HTTP Response
LibreSSL ocspcheck through 4.4.0 contains a memory exhaustion vulnerability that allows malicious OCSP responders to exhaust memory by sending unbounded HTTP responses. Attackers controlling the responder or intercepting plain HTTP AIA OCSP traffic can stream…
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Medium 4.3
russh's SSH client is susceptible to unbounded allocations via EXT_INFO packets
russh is a Rust SSH client and server library that includes an SSH agent protocol implementation. Prior to 0.65.0, the client Session::process_packet path in russh/src/client/encrypted.rs accepts repeated packets encoded with russh's private msg::EXT_INFO = 7…