The product properly checks for the existence of a lock, but the lock can be externally controlled or influenced by an actor that is outside of the intended sphere of control.
This prevents the product from acting on associated resources or performing other behaviors that are controlled by the presence of the lock. Relevant locks might include an exclusive lock or mutex, or modifying a shared resource that is treated as a lock. If the lock can be held for an indefinite period of time, then the denial of service could be permanent.
Use any access control that is offered by the functionality that is offering the lock.
Use unpredictable names or identifiers for the locks. This might not always be possible or feasible.
Consider modifying your code to use non-blocking synchronization methods.
When an attacker can control a lock, the program may wait indefinitely until the attacker releases the lock, causing a denial of service to other users of the program. This is especially problematic if there is a blocking operation on the lock.
Automated code analysis techniques might not be able to reliably detect this weakness, since the application's behavior and general security model dictate which resource locks are critical. Interpretation of the weakness might require knowledge of the environment, e.g. if the existence of a file is used as a lock, but the file is created in a world-writable directory.
CVE-2001-0682Program can not execute when attacker obtains a mutex.
CVE-2002-1914Program can not execute when attacker obtains a lock on a critical output file.
CVE-2002-1915Program can not execute when attacker obtains a lock on a critical output file.
CVE-2002-0051Critical file can be opened with exclusive read access by user, preventing application of security policy. Possibly related to improper permissions, large-window race condition.
CVE-2000-0338Chain: predictable file names used for locking, allowing attacker to create the lock beforehand. Resultant from permissions and randomness.