ABSTRACT

The program fails to release a lock it holds, which might lead to deadlock.

EXPLANATION

The program can potentially fail to release a system resource.

Resource leaks have at least two common causes:

- Error conditions and other exceptional circumstances.

- Confusion over which part of the program is responsible for releasing the resource.

Most unreleased resource issues result in general software reliability problems, but if an attacker can intentionally trigger a resource leak, the attacker might be able to launch a denial of service by depleting the resource pool.

Example 1: The following code establishes a lock before performOperationInCriticalSection(), but fails to release the lock if an exception is thrown in that method.


Object synchronizationObject = new Object ();

System.Threading.Monitor.Enter(synchronizationObject);
performOperationInCriticalSection();
System.Threading.Monitor.Exit(synchronizationObject);

REFERENCES

[1] Standards Mapping - OWASP Top 10 2004 - (OWASP 2004) A9 Application Denial of Service

[2] Standards Mapping - Security Technical Implementation Guide Version 3 - (STIG 3) APP6080 CAT II

[3] Standards Mapping - Common Weakness Enumeration - (CWE) CWE ID 411

[4] Microsoft MSDN - Programming Guide - Thread Synchronization

[5] Standards Mapping - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Version 1.1 - (PCI 1.1) Requirement 6.5.9