An adversary exploits a few properties of XML(substitution entities and inline DTDs) to cause a denial of service situation due to excessive memory being allocated to fully expand the XML. The result of this denial of service could cause the application to freeze or crash.
Relationships
The table below shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern. These relationships are defined as ChildOf and ParentOf, and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as CanFollow, PeerOf, and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar attack patterns that the user may want to explore.
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
Standard Attack Pattern - A standard level attack pattern in CAPEC is focused on a specific methodology or technique used in an attack. It is often seen as a singular piece of a fully executed attack. A standard attack pattern is meant to provide sufficient details to understand the specific technique and how it attempts to accomplish a desired goal. A standard level attack pattern is a specific type of a more abstract meta level attack pattern.
Detailed Attack Pattern - A detailed level attack pattern in CAPEC provides a low level of detail, typically leveraging a specific technique and targeting a specific technology, and expresses a complete execution flow. Detailed attack patterns are more specific than meta attack patterns and standard attack patterns and often require a specific protection mechanism to mitigate actual attacks. A detailed level attack pattern often will leverage a number of different standard level attack patterns chained together to accomplish a goal.
This type of attack requires a server that accepts XML data and parses the data.
Mitigations
Design: Use libraries and templates that minimize unfiltered input. Use methods that limit entity expansion and throw exceptions on attempted entity expansion.
Implementation: Disable altogether the use of inline DTD schemas in your XML parsing objects. If must use DTD, normalize, filter and white list and parse with methods and routines that will detect entity expansion from untrusted sources.
Example Instances
In this example the attacker defines one large entity and refers to it many times.
<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE bomb [<!ENTITY x "AAAAA
... [100K of them] ...
AAAA">]> <boom>
<bang>&x;&x;
... [100K of them]...
&x;&x;</bang>
</boom>
This results in a relatively small message of 100KBs that will expand to a message in the GB range.
Related Weaknesses
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. If multiple weaknesses are associated with the attack pattern, then any of the weaknesses (but not necessarily all) may be present for the attack to be successful. Each related weakness is identified by a CWE identifier.
Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
Content History
Submissions
Submission Date
Submitter
Organization
2014-06-23
CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
Modifications
Modification Date
Modifier
Organization
2017-08-04
CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
Updated Related_Attack_Patterns
2019-04-04
CAPEC Content Team
The MITRE Corporation
Updated Related_Weaknesses
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Page Last Updated or Reviewed:
September 30, 2019
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Description
Content History
