Lack of Rate Limiting is a security problem where a website or app lets people make too many requests very quickly without stopping them. This lets bad people or computer programs do things like try many passwords to break into accounts, send lots of spam, or make the website stop working for everyone else. If there are no rate limits, the website can get overloaded or people can get into accounts they shouldn’t.
Rate limiting means putting limits on how many requests someone can make in a certain amount of time. If there are no limits, bad people can do bad things faster than the website can stop them.
If someone can try thousands of passwords very quickly, they have a better chance of guessing the right one. If there are no rate limits or ways to lock accounts, it’s easy for them.
If a part of a website lets you get information by using an ID number, and there are no limits, someone can quickly try lots of ID numbers to steal information.
Computer programs can keep asking for pages or functions that use a lot of the server’s resources. If the server can’t slow them down, it can get overloaded and stop working for regular users.
If people can post things like comments or messages, bad people can fill them with spam or bad links if they can post them as much as they want.
- Put in Request Throttling
- Use tools that watch how many requests are being made and stop or slow down requests that go over the limit.
- Set limits based on IP addresses or user accounts to stop big bursts of requests.
- Lock Accounts or Use Captchas
- If someone tries to log in too many times and fails, lock their account or make them prove they’re not a robot by using a CAPTCHA.
- This makes it much harder for bad people to break into accounts.
- Make People Use Strong Passwords
- Tell people to use strong passwords and use extra security like two-factor authentication to make it harder for bad people to guess passwords, even if there are no rate limits.
- This helps protect accounts even if rate limiting isn’t perfect.
- Watch for Strange Traffic
- Use tools to watch for big increases in requests or patterns that look like computer programs are doing them.
- Get alerts if there are too many requests to certain parts of the website so you can do something about it quickly.
- Use Web Application Firewalls (WAF)
- Use WAF rules to find and stop too many requests or repeated patterns aimed at important parts of the website.
- Block or slow down bad IP addresses or suspicious traffic.