Endpoint Denial of Service: Application Exhaustion Flood
- ID
- T1499.003
- Tactics
- TA0040 Impact
- Sub-technique of
- T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service
- Platforms
- Windows, IaaS, Linux, macOS
- Data sources
- Application Log Content, Process Creation, Host Status, Network Traffic Content, Cloud Service Metadata
- Source
- attack.mitre.org
- MITRE last modified
- 25 Oct 2025
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.[2]
Detection
- DET0415 Application Exhaustion Flood Detection Across Platforms
Data components: Application Log Content, Process Creation, Host Status, Network Traffic Content, Cloud Service Metadata
Mitigations (1)
- M1037 Filter Network Traffic
Leverage services provided by Content Delivery Networks (CDN) or providers specializing in DoS mitigations to filter traffic upstream from services.[1] Filter boundary traffic by blocking source addresses sourcing the attack, blocking ports that are being targeted, or blocking protocols being used for transport.
References
- CERT-EU DDoS March 2017
- Arbor AnnualDoSreport Jan 2018