Name: Excessive Iteration

The product performs an iteration or loop without sufficiently limiting the number of times that the loop is executed.

CWE Description

If the iteration can be influenced by an attacker, this weakness could allow attackers to consume excessive resources such as CPU or memory. In many cases, a loop does not need to be infinite in order to cause enough resource consumption to adversely affect the product or its host system; it depends on the amount of resources consumed per iteration.

General Informations

Modes Of Introduction

Implementation

Applicable Platforms

Language

Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined)

Technologies

Class: Not Technology-Specific (Undetermined)

Common Consequences

Scope	Impact	Likelihood
Availability	DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU), DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory), DoS: Amplification, DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart Note: Excessive looping will cause unexpected consumption of resources, such as CPU cycles or memory. The product's operation may slow down, or cause a long time to respond. If limited resources such as memory are consumed for each iteration, the loop may eventually cause a crash or program exit due to exhaustion of resources, such as an out-of-memory error.

Observed Examples

References	Description
CVE-2011-1027	Chain: off-by-one error (CWE-193) leads to infinite loop (CWE-835) using invalid hex-encoded characters.
CVE-2006-6499	Chain: web browser crashes due to infinite loop - "bad looping logic [that relies on] floating point math [CWE-1339] to exit the loop [CWE-835]"

Detection Methods

Dynamic Analysis with Manual Results Interpretation

Effectiveness : SOAR Partial

Manual Static Analysis - Source Code

Effectiveness : SOAR Partial

Automated Static Analysis - Source Code

Effectiveness : High

Architecture or Design Review

Effectiveness : High

Vulnerability Mapping Notes

Justification : This CWE entry is a level-1 Class (i.e., a child of a Pillar). It might have lower-level children that would be more appropriate
Comment : Examine children of this entry to see if there is a better fit

References

REF-62

The Art of Software Security Assessment
Mark Dowd, John McDonald, Justin Schuh.

REF-1479

State-of-the-Art Resources (SOAR) for Software Vulnerability Detection, Test, and Evaluation
Gregory Larsen, E. Kenneth Hong Fong, David A. Wheeler, Rama S. Moorthy.
https://www.ida.org/-/media/feature/publications/s/st/stateoftheart-resources-soar-for-software-vulnerability-detection-test-and-evaluation/p-5061.ashx

Submission

Name	Organization	Date	Date release	Version
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2011-03-22 +00:00	2011-03-30 +00:00	1.12

Modifications

Name	Organization	Date	Comment
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2011-06-01 +00:00	updated Common_Consequences, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2012-05-11 +00:00	updated References, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2014-07-30 +00:00	updated Detection_Factors
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2017-11-08 +00:00	updated Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2019-06-20 +00:00	updated Relationships, Type
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2020-02-24 +00:00	updated Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2020-12-10 +00:00	updated Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2021-07-20 +00:00	updated Observed_Examples, Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2023-01-31 +00:00	updated Common_Consequences, Description, Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2023-04-27 +00:00	updated Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2023-06-29 +00:00	updated Mapping_Notes
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2023-10-26 +00:00	updated Observed_Examples
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2024-02-29 +00:00	updated Demonstrative_Examples, Mapping_Notes
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2025-09-09 +00:00	updated Detection_Factors, References
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2025-12-11 +00:00	updated Applicable_Platforms, Time_of_Introduction, Weakness_Ordinalities

CWE-834 Detail

CWE-834