CWE-419 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
What this means
SiteShadow flagged code paths where an attacker can cause the system to consume too much CPU, memory, disk, or network—often by sending large inputs, triggering expensive operations, or creating unbounded loops/queues.
Why it matters
Unbounded resource use can lead to outages or denial of service.
- Denial of service: repeated expensive requests degrade or crash services.
- Cost spikes: runaway compute/storage bills (especially in cloud environments).
- Cascading failures: one overloaded service can take down dependent services.
Safer examples
1) Put hard limits on inputs and work
Limit request body size, file upload size, query complexity, pagination, and recursion depth.
2) Add timeouts and circuit breakers
Set DB/query timeouts, HTTP timeouts, and background job time limits.
3) Rate limit expensive endpoints
Apply throttling and caching to expensive operations; prefer async processing for heavy tasks.
How SiteShadow detects it (high level)
- Detects high-cost operations reachable from request input without guards (limits, timeouts, pagination).
- Flags unbounded loops, queues, and missing size checks near parsers and upload handlers.
References
- CWE-419: https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/419.html
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