Multiple Locks of a Critical Resource

The product locks a critical resource more times than intended, leading to an unexpected state in the system.


Description

When a product is operating in a concurrent environment and repeatedly locks a critical resource, the consequences will vary based on the type of lock, the lock's implementation, and the resource being protected. In some situations such as with semaphores, the resources are pooled and extra locking calls will reduce the size of the total available pool, possibly leading to degraded performance or a denial of service. If this can be triggered by an attacker, it will be similar to an unrestricted lock (CWE-412). In the context of a binary lock, it is likely that any duplicate locking attempts will never succeed since the lock is already held and progress may not be possible.

See Also

Comprehensive Categorization: Concurrency

Weaknesses in this category are related to concurrency.

SFP Secondary Cluster: Multiple Locks/Unlocks

This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Multiple Locks/Unlocks cluster (SFP21).

Resource Locking Problems

Weaknesses in this category are related to improper handling of locks that are used to control access to resources.

Comprehensive CWE Dictionary

This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.

Entries with Maintenance Notes

CWE entries in this view have maintenance notes. Maintenance notes are an indicator that an entry might change significantly in future versions. This view was created...

Weaknesses Introduced During Implementation

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.


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