CWE-789 — Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value
CWE-789: Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value
MITRE CWE weakness
| Kind | Weakness |
| Abstraction | Variant |
| Status | Draft |
| Likelihood of exploit | — |
Description
The product allocates memory based on an untrusted, large size value, but it does not ensure that the size is within expected limits, allowing arbitrary amounts of memory to be allocated.
Common consequences
- Availability: DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
Mitigations
Implementation — Perform adequate input validation against any value that influences the amount of memory that is allocated. Define an appropriate strategy for handling requests that exceed the limit, and consider supporting a configuration option so that the administrator can extend the amount of memory to be used if necessary.
Operation — Run your program using system-provided resource limits for memory. This might still cause the program to crash or exit, but the impact to the rest of the system will be minimized.
References
- CWE page: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/789.html
- CWE list: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/index.html