CAPEC-25: Forced Deadlock
The adversary triggers and exploits a deadlock condition in the target software to cause a denial of service. A deadlock can occur when two or more competing actions are waiting for each other to finish, and thus neither ever does. Deadlock conditions can be difficult to detect.
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Overview
CAPEC-25 (Forced Deadlock) is a meta-level attack pattern catalogued by MITRE in the Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC). It describes a recurring method attackers use to exploit software weaknesses.
How the attack works
The phases an attacker typically follows to carry out this attack.
- Step 1Explore
The adversary initiates an exploratory phase to get familiar with the system.
- Step 2Explore
The adversary triggers a first action (such as holding a resource) and initiates a second action which will wait for the first one to finish.
- Step 3Explore
If the target program has a deadlock condition, the program waits indefinitely resulting in a denial of service.
What the attacker needs
Prerequisites
- The target host has a deadlock condition. There are four conditions for a deadlock to occur, known as the Coffman conditions. [REF-101]