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Attack Patterns T1499.003 — Application Exhaustion Flood
T1499.003

Application Exhaustion Flood

Impact
TLP:CLEAR

Description

Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications. For example, specific features in web applications may be highly resource intensive. Repeated requests to those features may be able to exhaust system resources and deny access to the application or the server itself.(Citation: Arbor AnnualDoSreport Jan 2018)

MITRE ATT&CK Detection Strategies
1

DET0415 Application Exhaustion Flood Detection Across Platforms
AN1165 Windows

Repeated invocation of high-resource application endpoints or GUI components causing CPU and memory spikes, logged as elevated request volumes, prolonged handle locks, or frequent crash recoveries.

WinEventLog:Application WinEventLog:Sysmon Windows:perfmon
AN1166 Linux

Automated scripts or repeated CLI/API requests that trigger application backends to consume high CPU or memory (e.g., Apache/PHP, MySQL, mail servers), resulting in syslog errors and excessive process spawning.

auditd:SYSCALL linux:syslog NSM:Flow
AN1168 IaaS

Automated abuse of cloud-hosted applications (e.g., web apps, REST endpoints, internal APIs) causing compute exhaustion, high 5xx error rates, or frequent autoscaling triggers logged in app insights or cloudwatch.

AWS:CloudWatch AWS:CloudTrail AWS:CloudMetrics
+1 more analytics

MITRE ATT&CK Mitigations
1

M1037

Filter Network Traffic

Employ network appliances and endpoint software to filter ingress, egress, and lateral network traffic. This includes protocol-based filtering, enforcing firewall rules, and blocking or restricting traffic based on predefined conditions to limit adversary movement and data exfiltration. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures: Ingress Traffic Filtering: - Use Case: Configure network firewalls to allow traffic only from authorized IP addresses to public-facing servers. - Implementation: Limit SSH (port 22) and RDP (port 3389) traffic to specific IP ranges. Egress Traffic Filtering: - Use Case: Use firewalls or endpoint security software to block unauthorized outbound traffic to prevent data exfiltration and command-and-control (C2) communications. - Implementation: Block outbound traffic to known malicious IPs or regions where communication is unexpected. Protocol-Based Filtering: - Use Case: Restrict the use of specific protocols that are commonly abused by adversaries, such as SMB, RPC, or Telnet, based on business needs. - Implementation: Disable SMBv1 on endpoints to prevent exploits like EternalBlue. Network Segmentation: - Use Case: Create network segments for critical systems and restrict communication between segments unless explicitly authorized. - Implementation: Implement VLANs to isolate IoT devices or guest networks from core business systems. Application Layer Filtering: - Use Case: Use proxy servers or Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) to inspect and block malicious HTTP/S traffic. - Implementation: Configure a WAF to block SQL injection attempts or other web application exploitation techniques.

Details

Platforms
Windows
Iaas
Linux
Macos
Added
May 2, 2026
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