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
2,479 results · Feed
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High 7.5
A resource exhaustion issue was addressed with improved input validation. This issue is fixed in iOS 26.7.2 and iPadOS …
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Medium 5.9
Autobahn Python: permessage-brotli inflates a whole frame before maxMessagePayloadSize is checked (incomplete fix of GHSA-hxp9-w8x3-p566)
Autobahn Python is a WebSocket and WAMP implementation for Python that supports Twisted and asyncio. From 26.7.1 until 26.10.1, PerMessageBrotli.decompress_message_data in compress_brotli.py calls the Brotli decompressor without an output limit and checks max…
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Medium 5.3
Tornado: Quadratic CPU usage when parsing HTTP headers with line folding
Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library. Prior to 6.6, Tornado's HTTP header parser accepts obsolete line folding and repeatedly concatenates short continuation lines, causing quadratic CPU consumption on the IOLoop thread. An un…
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Medium 5.3
Tornado: Event loop blocking and excess memory use from chunked bodies with many small chunks
Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library. Prior to 6.6.0, Tornado decodes HTTP/1.1 chunked transfer encoding by processing body data that has already arrived without yielding to the event loop. A remote unauthenticated peer can se…
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High 7.5
Consul vulnerable to a denial of service in HTTP APIs
HashiCorp Consul and Consul Enterprise are vulnerable to a denial of service in the HTTP API that may allow an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust memory on a Consul agent. This vulnerability (CVE-2026-105626) is fixed in Consul Community Edition 2.1.0 and Co…
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Medium 6.5
vLLM: Responses API bypasses trust_request_chat_template for chat_template_kwargs
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models. From 0.16.0 until 0.32.0, the /v1/responses endpoint allows an authenticated caller to place an attacker-controlled template in chat_template_kwargs[chat_template] when no server template is c…
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Medium 6.5
vLLM: Phi-4 multimodal audio encoder materializes and retains full attention matrices: a single max-length audio OOM-crashes the vLLM engine
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models. Prior to 0.32.0, the Phi-4 multimodal audio encoder in phi4mm_audio.py and phi4mm_utils.py uses eager attention by default, allowing a remote client to submit one legal long audio clip that ca…
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Medium 6.5
vLLM: DoS via unbounded chat_template Jinja2 rendering exhausts the renderer thread pool
vLLM is an inference and serving engine for large language models. From 0.19.0 until 0.32.0, authenticated callers can supply a request chat template when no server-side --chat-template is configured, or a malicious model repository can provide a template tha…
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High 7.5
Apache Vysper: Unbounded allocation
**UNSUPPORTED WHEN ASSIGNED** Unbounded allocation in XML parsing in Apache Vysper; all versions, may lead to an out of memory condition. This issue affects all versions of Apache Vysper. Apache Vysper is an XMPP (Jabber) server library. As this project is r…
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High 8.2
Unbounded response body buffering and decompression in hackney
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in hackney_conn in benoitc hackney allows a malicious HTTP server to exhaust client memory via an oversized or highly compressed response body. hackney:request/5 and hackney:body/1 return the …
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High 8.7
Client-chosen HPACK encoder table size is applied uncapped, growing per-connection state with every response in Bandit
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in the HTTP/2 implementation of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to grow per-connection memory and CPU cost without bound via a large SETTINGS_HEADER_TABLE_SIZE. Bandit…
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High 8.7
HTTP/1.1 chunked request bodies made of 1-byte chunks amplify memory use in Bandit
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in the HTTP/1.1 chunked body reader of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server memory and CPU via a request body made of many 1-byte chunks. The chunked read…
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High 8.7
WebSocket 1-byte continuation frames bypass `max_fragmented_message_size` in Bandit
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in the WebSocket fragment reassembly of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server memory via a fragmented message made of many 1-byte continuation frames. Band…
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High 8.7
HTTP/2 WINDOW_UPDATE and SETTINGS frames reset the request body read timeout in Bandit
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in the HTTP/2 request body reader of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to hold stream processes open indefinitely via WINDOW_UPDATE or empty SETTINGS frames sent while a…
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High 8.7
HTTP/2 inbound flow control is not enforced, letting a client queue unbounded DATA in stream processes in Bandit
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in the HTTP/2 implementation of mtrudel bandit allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exhaust server memory via DATA frames sent past the advertised receive window. The attacker requests…
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Medium 5.6
NocoDB PublicApiLimiterGuard signup UserRefreshToken.deleteAllUserToken allocation of resources
A vulnerability was determined in NocoDB up to 2026.07.0. This vulnerability affects the function UserRefreshToken.deleteAllUserToken of the file /auth/user/signup of the component PublicApiLimiterGuard. This manipulation causes allocation of resources. The a…
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High 7.5
Starman versions before 0.4019 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via unbounded buffering of chunked request bodies
Starman versions before 0.4019 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via unbounded buffering of chunked request bodies. The chunked body decoder keeps each chunk in memory until the whole chunk and its CRLF have arrived, and sets no limit on the length of a chunk-…
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High 7.5
Starman versions before 0.4019 for Perl allow a stalled request body to hold a worker indefinitely, as read_timeout covers only the headers
Starman versions before 0.4019 for Perl allow a stalled request body to hold a worker indefinitely, as read_timeout covers only the headers. Content-Length and chunked request bodies are read with blocking reads and no deadline. A client that sends complete h…
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High 7.5
vLLM 0.18.0 before 0.31.0 Memory Exhaustion via media_io_kwargs num_frames Override
vLLM from 0.18.0 before 0.31.0 contains a resource exhaustion vulnerability that allows API clients to bypass the video/jpeg frame-count cap by overriding num_frames through media_io_kwargs. Attackers can set num_frames to -1 with a large inline video so Vide…
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Low 3.3
ImageMagick before 6.9.13-58 and 7.x before 7.1.2-33 Policy Bypass in PS, PDF and XPS Decoders
ImageMagick before 6.9.13-58 and 7.x before 7.1.2-33 contains a policy bypass in the PS, PDF and XPS decoders that allows the security policy's list length limit on scene selection to be circumvented. Attackers supplying a specific argument can cause ImageMag…
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High 7.5
Twisted: Unauthenticated Remote Denial of Service in the Twisted conch Telnet Transport via an Unbounded Subnegotiation Buffer
Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications, supporting Python 3.6+. Prior to 26.10.0rc1, twisted.conch.telnet.Telnet.dataReceived appends every byte received after IAC SB to a persistent subnegotiation buffer until IAC SE is received, witho…
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High 7.5
Twisted: Unauthenticated Remote Denial of Service in the Twisted IRC Server via an Unbounded Line Buffer
Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications, supporting Python 3.6+. Prior to 26.10.0rc1, twisted.words.protocols.irc.IRC.dataReceived retains all bytes received without a line feed in its per-connection buffer and applies no maximum line le…
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High 8.7
Twisted: Unauthenticated Remote Denial of Service in the Twisted words domish XML Element Stream via an Unbounded Element Tree
Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications, supporting Python 3.6+. Prior to 26.10.0rc1, the twisted.words.xish.domish ExpatElementStream parser allows an unauthenticated remote peer to keep a container element open while continuously addin…
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Medium 5.3
Part-DB: Attachment Size Limit Bypass via API Base64 Upload
Part-DB is an open source inventory management system for electronic components. Prior to version 2.13.2, Part-DB allows authenticated API users to bypass the configured maximum attachment file size by uploading attachments through the API using base64-encode…
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Medium 5.3
Part-DB: Authenticated Disk Exhaustion via Unbounded Server-Side Attachment Downloads
Part-DB is an open source inventory management system for electronic components. Prior to version 2.13.2, Part-DB allows authenticated users to bypass the configured maximum attachment file size when using the server-side “Download external file” attachment f…
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Medium 5.5
Ghidra before 12.2 Denial of Service via TAR and ZIP File System Mount
Ghidra before 12.2 contains a resource allocation without limits vulnerability in FileSystemIndexHelper used by TarFileSystem and ZipFileSystem, which store unbounded archive entries. Attackers can persuade a user to open or batch-import a crafted TAR or ZIP …
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Medium 5.5
Ghidra before 12.2 Denial of Service via Extension Archive Install
Ghidra before 12.2 contains a resource allocation without limits vulnerability in ExtensionUtils.unzipToInstallationFolder() that extracts every extension ZIP entry without limiting file count. Attackers who persuade a user to install a crafted extension arch…
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Medium 5.5
Ghidra 10.3 before 12.2 Denial of Service via ThemeReader.readZipTheme()
Ghidra 10.3 before 12.2 contains a resource allocation without limits vulnerability in ThemeReader.readZipTheme() that extracts unlimited theme ZIP entries to the images directory. Attackers can persuade users to import a crafted theme archive with many small…
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Medium 5.8
Wasmtime 46.0.0 before 46.0.3 and 47.0.0 before 47.0.4 Unbounded Heap Allocation via WASIp3 Streams
Wasmtime 46.0.0 before 46.0.3 and 47.0.0 before 47.0.4 contains an uncontrolled resource allocation vulnerability in its WASIp3 implementation that buffers guest-specified-length writes on the host without limit. Malicious guests can offer large buffers to WA…
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Low 2.3
Wasmtime before 36.0.16, 37.0.0 before 48.0.3, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.1 Denial of Service via Val API
Wasmtime before 36.0.16, 37.0.0 before 48.0.3, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.1 does not adequately account for host allocations when lifting guest values through the dynamically-typed Val API, bypassing the hostcall fuel limit. A malicious WebAssembly guest can retu…
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Medium 4.8
Wasmtime before 36.0.17, 37.0.0 before 48.0.4, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.2 Unbounded Host Memory Allocation via SinkOutputStream write-zeroes
Wasmtime before 36.0.17, 37.0.0 before 48.0.4, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.2 contains an unbounded memory allocation in the wasmtime-wasi WASIp2 write-zeroes method of SinkOutputStream, the default stream used when stdout/stderr are not configured. A malicious Web…
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Medium 4.0
Wasmtime before 36.0.17, 37.0.0 before 48.0.4, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.2 Fuel Limit Bypass DoS via WASI Preview 0 poll_oneoff
Wasmtime before 36.0.17, 37.0.0 before 48.0.4, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.2 contains a denial of service vulnerability in the wasmtime-wasi WASI preview 0 poll_oneoff adapter, which performs O(n) host work per subscription without consuming or checking fuel. Mali…
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Medium 5.9
Memory-exhaustion denial of service via unbounded symbol interning during BSON/JSON deserialization
The MongoDB C# Driver's BSON library contains an uncontrolled resource consumption weakness in its deserialization handling of one BSON value type. An application that deserializes untrusted content with the library retains data derived from that content for …
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Medium 6.5
fpdf2: Exponential SVG '<use>' expansion causes CPU and memory exhaustion in 'FPDF.image()'
fpdf2 is a PDF creation library for Python. From 2.5.0 until 2.8.8, fpdf2's SVGObject.build_xref() passes nested SVG <use> references to GraphicsContext.add_item(), whose default clone=True deep-copy behavior copies the complete referenced graphics tree durin…
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High 7.5
GraphQL-core: Denial of service via comment tokens bypassing the parser's max_tokens limit
GraphQL-core is a Python port of the GraphQL.js reference implementation. From 3.2.3 until 3.2.12 and 3.3.0rc1, the parser's max_tokens limit in Parser.advance_lexer counts only non-comment tokens returned after Lexer.lookahead skips comments. Each skipped co…
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Medium 5.3
Large tables in data apps can bring down execution services in KNIME Hub
An excessive resource allocation issue in the remote workflow editing capabilities of KNIME Business Hub prior to version 1.19.0 allows a authenticated attack to exhaust resources on the server side. This leads to intermittent unavailability of workflow execu…
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High 8.2
Next.js: Denial of Service in App Router using Server Actions
Next.js is a React framework for building full-stack web applications. From 13.0.0 until 15.5.28 and 16.4.1, crafted requests targeting App Router applications with at least one Server Action can cause excessive CPU consumption and block processing of further…
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High 7.5
In lsquic before 4.9.0, the HTTP/3 implementation can use an excessive amount of memory because the number of buffered …
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High 8.2
Unbounded atom creation from unsigned LogoutResponse status codes in esaml allows atom table exhaustion
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in esaml in dropbox esaml allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust the Erlang VM atom table and crash the node via unsigned LogoutResponse messages. esaml:status_code_map/1 in src/esaml.e…
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High 8.7
Unbounded atom creation while parsing SAML messages in esaml allows atom table exhaustion
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling vulnerability in esaml_binding in dropbox esaml allows an unauthenticated attacker to exhaust the Erlang VM atom table and crash the node via a crafted SAMLResponse. esaml_binding:decode_response/2 parses t…