CAPEC-231: Oversized Serialized Data Payloads

Description
An adversary injects oversized serialized data payloads into a parser during data processing to produce adverse effects upon the parser such as exhausting system resources and arbitrary code execution.
Extended Description

Applications often need to transform data in and out of serialized data formats, such as XML and YAML, by using a data parser. It may be possible for an adversary to inject data that may have an adverse effect on the parser when it is being processed. By supplying oversized payloads in input vectors that will be processed by the parser, an adversary can cause the parser to consume more resources while processing, causing excessive memory consumption and CPU utilization, and potentially cause execution of arbitrary code. An adversary's goal is to leverage parser failure to their advantage. DoS is most closely associated with web services, SOAP, and Rest, because remote service requesters can post malicious data payloads to the service provider designed to exhaust the service provider's memory, CPU, and/or disk space. This attack exploits the loosely coupled nature of web services, where the service provider has little to no control over the service requester and any messages the service requester sends.

Severity :

High

Possibility :

Medium

Type :

Standard
Prerequisites

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

  • An application uses an parser for serialized data to perform transformation on user-controllable data.
  • An application does not perform sufficient validation to ensure that user-controllable data is safe for a data parser.
Skills required

This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern.

  • Low Denial of service
  • High Arbitrary code execution
Taxonomy mappings

Mappings to ATT&CK, OWASP and other frameworks.

Related CWE

A Related Weakness relationship associates a weakness with this attack pattern. Each association implies a weakness that must exist for a given attack to be successful.

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