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
2,488 results · Feed
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High 8.7
WebSocket fragmented message reassembly unbounded in bandit
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in mtrudel bandit allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via memory exhaustion. The fragment reassembly path in 'Elixir.Bandit.WebSocket.Connection':handle_frame/3 in lib/bandit/webso…
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Medium 6.9
HTTP/2 frame size limit checked after body is buffered in bandit
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in mtrudel bandit allows unauthenticated memory exhaustion via oversized HTTP/2 frames. 'Elixir.Bandit.HTTP2.Frame':deserialize/2 in lib/bandit/http2/frame.ex checks the SETTINGS_MAX_FRAME_SIZ…
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Medium 5.3
An issue was discovered in Prosody before 0.12.6 and 1.0.0 through 13.0.0 before 13.0.5. A Denial of Service can occur …
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Medium 6.5
IBM® Db2® is vulnerable to a denial of service with a specially crafted query when stmtheap is set to automatic
IBM Db2 11.5.0 through 11.5.9, and 12.1.0 through 12.1.3 for Linux, UNIX and Windows (includes DB2 Connect Server) could allow an authenticated user to cause a denial of service using a specially crafted SQL query due to improper allocation of system resource…
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High 7.5CVE-2025-51846 Public exploit
CryptPad unbounded WebSocket frame flood
CryptPad 2025.3.1 allows unbounded WebSocket frame flood. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can significantly degrade or deny service for all users of a CryptPad instance. Fixed in 2026.2.2.
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High 7.5
pgjdbc: Unbounded PBKDF2 iterations in SCRAM authentication allows CPU exhaustion DoS
pgjdbc is an open source postgresql JDBC Driver. From version 42.2.0 to before version 42.7.11, pgjdbc is vulnerable to a client-side denial of service during SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication. A malicious server can instruct the driver to perform SCRAM authentica…
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Medium 4.3
OpenClaw < 2026.4.8 - Improper Base64 Decoding Size Validation
OpenClaw before 2026.4.8 contains improper input validation in base64 decode paths that allocate memory before enforcing decoded-size limits. Attackers can exploit multiple code paths to cause memory exhaustion or denial of service through crafted base64-enco…
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Medium 4.3
OpenClaw < 2026.3.31 - Disk Exhaustion via Media Download Bypass
OpenClaw before 2026.3.31 contains a resource exhaustion vulnerability in media downloads that bypasses core safety limits for file size, count, and cleanup operations. Attackers can exhaust disk space by downloading media files without triggering intended sa…
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Medium 5.3
OpenClaw < 2026.3.31 - Resource Consumption via Oversized WebSocket Frames in voice-call
OpenClaw before 2026.3.31 contains an incomplete fix for CVE-2026-32062 where the voice-call component parses large WebSocket frames before start validation. Remote attackers can send oversized pre-start WebSocket frames to cause resource consumption and deni…
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High 7.5
OpenClaw < 2026.3.28 - Denial of Service via Unbounded Pre-auth WebSocket Upgrades
OpenClaw before 2026.3.28 accepts unbounded concurrent unauthenticated WebSocket upgrades without pre-authentication budget allocation. Unauthenticated network attackers can exhaust socket and worker capacity to disrupt WebSocket availability for legitimate c…
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Medium 5.3
OpenClaw < 2026.3.31 - Resource Consumption via Discord Audio Preflight Before Member Authorization
OpenClaw before 2026.3.31 performs Discord audio preflight transcription before validating member authorization, allowing unauthenticated attackers to consume resources. Remote attackers can trigger audio preflight processing without member allowlist validati…
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High 8.7
Atom table exhaustion via HTTP/2 :scheme pseudo-header in plug_cowboy
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in elixir-plug plug_cowboy allows unauthenticated remote denial of service via atom table exhaustion. Plug.Cowboy.Conn.conn/1 in lib/plug/cowboy/conn.ex calls String.to_atom/1 on the value ret…
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Medium 6.9
Axios: unbounded recursion in toFormData causes DoS via deeply nested request data
Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. Prior to 1.15.1 and 0.31.1, toFormData recursively walks nested objects with no depth limit, so a deeply nested value passed as request data crashes the Node.js process with a RangeError. This …
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Medium 5.3
Axios: HTTP adapter streamed responses bypass maxContentLength
Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. Prior to 1.15.1 and 0.31.1, when responseType: 'stream' is used, Axios returns the response stream without enforcing maxContentLength. This bypasses configured response-size limits and allows u…
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Medium 5.3
Axios: HTTP adapter streamed uploads bypass maxBodyLength when maxRedirects: 0
Axios is a promise based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. Prior to 1.15.1 and 0.31.1, for stream request bodies, maxBodyLength is bypassed when maxRedirects is set to 0 (native http/https transport path). Oversized streamed uploads are sent fully even…
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High 7.5
Tempo query limit results in unbounded memory allocation
Tempo queries with large limits can cause large memory allocations which can impact the availability of the service, depending on its deployment strategy. Mitigation can be done by setting max_result_limit in the search config, e.g. to 262144 (2^18). Alternat…
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High 7.5
basic-ftp vulnerable to denial of service via unbounded memory consumption in Client.list()
basic-ftp is an FTP client for Node.js. Versions prior to 5.3.0 are vulnerable to denial of service through unbounded memory growth while processing directory listings from a remote FTP server. A malicious or compromised server can send an extremely large or …
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High 8.2
Open Source Social Network (OSSN) Vulnerable to Resource Exhaustion via Malicious Image Processing
Open Source Social Network (OSSN) is open-source social networking software developed in PHP. Versions prior to 9.0 are vulnerable to resource exhaustion. An attacker can upload a specially crafted image with extreme pixel dimensions (e.g., $10000 \times 1000…
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Medium 5.3
OpenClaw < 2026.3.31 - Denial of Service via LINE Webhook Handler Pre-Auth Concurrency
OpenClaw before 2026.3.31 lacks a shared pre-auth concurrency budget on the public LINE webhook path, allowing attackers to cause transient availability loss. Remote attackers can flood the webhook endpoint with concurrent requests before signature verificati…
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Medium 6.5
OpenClaw < 2026.3.31 - Decompression Bomb Denial of Service via Image Pixel-Limit Guard Bypass
OpenClaw before 2026.3.31 contains a decompression bomb vulnerability in image processing that fails to properly enforce pixel-limit guards on sips. Attackers can exploit this by uploading oversized images to cause denial of service through excessive memory c…
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Medium 5.9
Unbounded HTTP response body read in OpenTelemetry.Sampler.AWS
The AWS X-Ray Remote Sampler package provides a sampler which can get sampling configurations from AWS X-Ray. Prior to 0.1.0-alpha.8, OpenTelemetry.Sampler.AWS reads unbounded HTTP response bodies from a configured AWS X-Ray remote sampling endpoint into memo…
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Medium 5.9
OpenTelemetry dotnet: Potential memory exhaustion via unbounded pooled-list sizing in Jaeger exporter conversion path
OpenTelemetry dotnet is a dotnet telemetry framework. In 1.6.0-rc.1 and earlier, OpenTelemetry.Exporter.Jaeger may allow sustained memory pressure when the internal pooled-list sizing grows based on a large observed span/tag set and that enlarged size is reus…
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Medium 5.3
Nimiq has Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in its libp2p request/response
nimiq-libp2p is a Nimiq network implementation based on libp2p. Prior to version 1.3.0, `MessageCodec::read_request` and `read_response` call `read_to_end()` on inbound substreams, so a remote peer can send only a partial frame and keep the substream open. be…
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Medium 6.5
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in GitLab
GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 10.6 before 18.9.6, 18.10 before 18.10.4, and 18.11 before 18.11.1 that could have allowed an authenticated user to cause denial of service under certain conditions by exhausting serve…
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Medium 6.5
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in GitLab
GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 12.4 before 18.9.6, 18.10 before 18.10.4, and 18.11 before 18.11.1 that could have allowed an authenticated user to cause denial of service by overwhelming system resources under certa…
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Medium 6.5
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in GitLab
GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 9.2 before 18.9.6, 18.10 before 18.10.4, and 18.11 before 18.11.1 that could have allowed an authenticated user to cause denial of service due to insufficient resource allocation limit…
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Medium 6.5
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling in GitLab
GitLab has remediated an issue in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 12.3 before 18.9.6, 18.10 before 18.10.4, and 18.11 before 18.11.1 that under certain conditions could have allowed an authenticated user to cause denial of service when importing issu…
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Medium 5.3
Outgoing DoH excessive memory allocation
A client can trigger excessive memory allocation by generating a lot of queries that are routed to an overloaded DoH backend, causing queries to accumulate into a buffer that will not be released until the end of the connection.
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Medium 5.3
DoQ/DoH3 excessive memory allocation
A client can trigger excessive memory allocation by generating a lot of errors responses over a single DoQ and DoH3 connection, as some resources were not properly released until the end of the connection.
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Medium 5.3
Resource exhaustion via DoQ/DoH3 connections
An attacker can create a large number of concurrent DoQ or DoH3 connections, causing unlimited memory allocation in DNSdist and leading to a denial of service. DOQ and DoH3 are disabled by default.
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Medium 5.3
Insufficient input validation of internal webserver
An attacker can send a web request that causes unlimited memory allocation in the internal web server, leading to a denial of service. The internal web server is disabled by default.
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Medium 5.3
Crafted zones can cause increased resource usage
By publishing and querying a crafted zone an attacker can cause allocation of large entries in the negative and aggressive NSEC(3) caches.
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Medium 5.3
Insufficient input validation of internal webserver
An attacker can send a web request that causes unlimited memory allocation in the internal web server, leading to a denial of service. The internal web server is disabled by default.
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Medium 5.3
Unbounded memory allocation by internal web server
An attacker can send a web request that causes unlimited memory allocation in the internal web server, leading to a denial of service. The internal web server is disabled by default.
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Low 3.7CVE-2026-22018 Public exploit
Vulnerability in the Oracle Java SE, Oracle GraalVM for JDK, Oracle GraalVM Enterprise Edition product of Oracle Java S…
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Medium 6.3
Zebra: addr/addrv2 Deserialization Resource Exhaustion
ZEBRA is a Zcash node written entirely in Rust. Prior to zebrad version 4.3.0 and zebra-network version 5.0.1, when deserializing addr or addrv2 messages, which contain vectors of addresses, Zebra would fully deserialize them up to a maximum length (over 233,…
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High 7.5
Nest: DoS via Recursive handleData in JsonSocket (TCP Transport)
Nest is a framework for building scalable Node.js server-side applications. Prior to 11.1.19, when an attacker sends many small, valid JSON messages in one TCP frame, handleData() recurses once per message; the buffer shrinks each call. maxBufferSize is never…
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Medium 6.2
Next AI Draw.io: Unbounded HTTP Body — Denial of Service
Next AI Draw.io is a next.js web application that integrates AI capabilities with draw.io diagrams. Prior to 0.4.15, the embedded HTTP sidecar contains three POST handlers (/api/state, /api/restore, and /api/history-svg) that process incoming requests by accu…
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High 8.9
FreeScout has Authentication Bypass and Information Disclosure in SystemController via /system/cron
FreeScout is a free self-hosted help desk and shared mailbox. Prior to version 1.8.213, an unauthenticated attacker can access diagnostic and system tools that should be restricted to administrators. The /system/cron endpoint relies on a static MD5 hash deriv…
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Low 3.1
OpenBao has Decompression Bomb via Unbounded Copy in OCI Plugin Extraction (DoS)
OpenBao is an open source identity-based secrets management system. Prior to version 2.5.3, `ExtractPluginFromImage()` in OpenBao's OCI plugin downloader extracts a plugin binary from a container image by streaming decompressed tar data via `io.Copy` with no …