Regular Expression Denial of Service

["Alex Roichman" <Alexr () Checkmarx com>]

Checkmarx Research Lab presents a new attack vector on Web applications. By
exploiting the Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) vulnerability an
attacker can make a Web application unavailable to its intended users. ReDoS
is commonly known as a “bug” in systems, but Alex Roichman and Adar Weidman
from Checkmarx show how serious it is and how using this technique, various
applications can be “ReDoSed”. These include, among others, Server-side of
Web applications and Client-side Browsers. The art of attacking the Web by
ReDoS is by finding inputs which cannot be matched by Regexes and on these
Regexes a Regex-based Web systems get stuck.

For further reading:
http://www.checkmarx.com/NewsDetails.aspx?id=23&cat=3


Alex Roichman
Chief Architect, Checkmarx Ltd. 
Mobile: +972 54 774 5198   Fax:  +972-3-6870794   Website: www.Checkmarx.com