CAPEC-469 Metadata
Likelihood of Attack
High
Typical Severity
Low
Overview
Summary
An attacker performs flooding at the HTTP level to bring down only a particular web application rather than anything listening on a TCP/IP connection. This denial of service attack requires substantially fewer packets to be sent which makes DoS harder to detect. This is an equivalent of SYN flood in HTTP. The idea is to keep the HTTP session alive indefinitely and then repeat that hundreds of times. This attack targets resource depletion weaknesses in web server software. The web server will wait to attacker's responses on the initiated HTTP sessions while the connection threads are being exhausted.
Prerequisites
HTTP protocol is usedWeb server used is vulnerable to denial of service via HTTP flooding
Potential Solutions / Mitigations
Configuration: Configure web server software to limit the waiting period on opened HTTP sessions Design: Use load balancing mechanisms
Related Weaknesses (CWE)
Related CAPECs
| CAPEC ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CAPEC-227 | An adversary attempts to deny legitimate users access to a resource by continually engaging a specific resource in an attempt to keep the resource tied up as long as possible. The adversary's primary goal is not to crash or flood the target, which would alert defenders; rather it is to repeatedly perform actions or abuse algorithmic flaws such that a given resource is tied up and not available to a legitimate user. By carefully crafting a requests that keep the resource engaged through what is seemingly benign requests, legitimate users are limited or completely denied access to the resource. |
Taxonomy Mappings
Taxonomy: ATTACK
| Entry ID | Entry Name |
|---|---|
| 1499.002 | Endpoint Denial of Service: Service Exhaustion Flood |
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