CAPEC-528: XML Flood

Description
An adversary may execute a flooding attack using XML messages with the intent to deny legitimate users access to a web service. These attacks are accomplished by sending a large number of XML based requests and letting the service attempt to parse each one. In many cases this type of an attack will result in a XML Denial of Service (XDoS) due to an application becoming unstable, freezing, or crashing.
Extended Description

XDoS is most closely associated with web services, SOAP, and Rest, because remote service requesters can post malicious XML payloads to the service provider designed to exhaust the service provider's memory, CPU, and/or disk space. The main weakness in XDoS is that the service provider generally must inspect, parse, and validate the XML messages to determine routing, workflow, security considerations, and so on. It is exactly these inspection, parsing, and validation routines that XDoS targets. 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 :

Medium

Possibility :

Low

Type :

Standard
Relationships with other CAPECs

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

Prerequisites

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

  • The target must receive and process XML transactions.
  • An adverssary must possess the ability to generate a large amount of XML based messages to send to the target service.
Skills required

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

  • Low Denial of service
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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