Official definition

The product allocates memory based on an untrusted, large size value, but it does not ensure that the size is within expected limits, allowing arbitrary amounts of memory to be allocated.

Characteristics

Alternate terms

Stack Exhaustion — When a weakness allocates excessive memory on the stack, it is often described as "stack exhaustion," which is a technical impact of the weakness. This technical impact is often encountered as a consequence of CWE-789 and/or CWE-1325.

Modes of introduction

Implementation

Common consequences

Impact	Scope	Explanation
DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)	Availability	Not controlling memory allocation can result in a request for too much system memory, possibly leading to a crash of the application due to out-of-memory conditions, or the consumption of a large amount of memory on the system.

Risk mitigations

Implementation, Architecture and DesignPerform adequate input validation against any value that influences the amount of memory that is allocated. Define an appropriate strategy for handling requests that exceed the limit, and consider supporting a configuration option so that the administrator can extend the amount of memory to be used if necessary.
OperationRun your program using system-provided resource limits for memory. This might still cause the program to crash or exit, but the impact to the rest of the system will be minimized.

Detection methods

Method	Approach	Effectiveness
Fuzzing	Fuzz testing (fuzzing) is a powerful technique for generating large numbers of diverse inputs - either randomly or algorithmically - and dynamically invoking the code with those inputs. Even with random inputs, it is often capable of generating unexpected results such as crashes, memory corruption, or resource consumption. Fuzzing effectively produces repeatable test cases that clearly indicate bugs, which helps developers to diagnose the issues.	High
Automated Static Analysis	Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)	High
Automated Dynamic Analysis	Use tools that are integrated during compilation to insert runtime error-checking mechanisms related to memory safety errors, such as AddressSanitizer (ASan) for C/C++ [REF-1518].Crafted inputs are necessary to reach the code containing the error, such as generated by fuzzers. Also, these tools may reduce performance, and they only report the error condition - not the original mistake that led to the error.	Moderate

Representative vulnerabilities

Below are representative vulnerabilities related to this CWE, prioritized by severity.

Sources (2)

MITRE CWE

CWE Terms of Use

CWE-789: Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value

What is CWE-789?

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Vulnerabilities mapped to CWE-789

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Official definition

Characteristics

Alternate terms

Modes of introduction

Common consequences

Risk mitigations

Detection methods

Representative vulnerabilities

Supporting documents

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