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.

Primary

Architecture and Design

Implementation

Availability
DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)
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.

White Box
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.

Architecture and Design
Implementation
Use any access control that is offered by the functionality that is offering the lock.

Architecture and Design
Implementation
Use unpredictable names or identifiers for the locks. This might not always be possible or feasible.

Architecture and Design
Consider modifying your code to use non-blocking synchronization methods.

This code tries to obtain a lock for a file, then writes to it.

function writeToLog($message){$logfile = fopen("logFile.log", "a");
//attempt to get logfile lock
if (flock($logfile, LOCK_EX)) {fwrite($logfile,$message);
// unlock logfile
flock($logfile, LOCK_UN);}else {print "Could not obtain lock on logFile.log, message not recorded\n";}}fclose($logFile);

PHP by default will wait indefinitely until a file lock is released. If an attacker is able to obtain the file lock, this code will pause execution, possibly leading to denial of service for other users. Note that in this case, if an attacker can perform an flock() on the file, they may already have privileges to destroy the log file. However, this still impacts the execution of other programs that depend on flock().

CVE-2001-0682
Program can not execute when attacker obtains a mutex.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2001-0682

CVE-2002-1914
Program can not execute when attacker obtains a lock on a critical output file.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2002-1914

CVE-2002-1915
Program can not execute when attacker obtains a lock on a critical output file.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2002-1915

CVE-2002-0051
Critical file can be opened with exclusive read access by user, preventing application of security policy. Possibly related to improper permissions, large-window race condition.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2002-0051

CVE-2000-0338
Chain: predictable file names used for locking, allowing attacker to create the lock beforehand. Resultant from permissions and randomness.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2000-0338

CVE-2000-1198
Chain: Lock files with predictable names. Resultant from randomness.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2000-1198

CVE-2002-1869
Product does not check if it can write to a log file, allowing attackers to avoid logging by accessing the file using an exclusive lock. Overlaps unchecked error condition. This is not quite CWE-412, but close.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2002-1869

Unrestricted Critical Resource Lock

Deadlock

A9
Denial of Service
CWE More Specific

LCK00-J
Use private final lock objects to synchronize classes that may interact with untrusted code

LCK07-J
Avoid deadlock by requesting and releasing locks in the same order

SFP22
Unrestricted lock

Allowed
This CWE entry is at the Base level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

This overlaps Insufficient Resource Pool when the "pool" is of size 1. It can also be resultant from race conditions, although the timing window could be quite large in some cases.

PLOVER
2006-07-19
Draft 3
2006-07-19

Eric Dalci
Cigital
2008-07-01
updated Potential_Mitigations, Time_of_Introduction

KDM Analytics
2008-08-01
added/updated white box definitions

Veracode
2008-08-15
Suggested OWASP Top Ten 2004 mapping

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2008-09-08
updated Common_Consequences, Description, Detection_Factors, Relationships, Observed_Example, Relationship_Notes, Taxonomy_Mappings

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2008-10-14
updated Description

KDM Analytics
2009-07-17
Critical
Suggested a better name and the minimal relationship with resources regardless of their criticality.

KDM Analytics
2009-07-17
Added a White_Box_Definition and clarified the consequences.

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2009-07-27
updated Common_Consequences, Description, Name, Potential_Mitigations, White_Box_Definitions

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-03-29
updated Demonstrative_Examples

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-01
updated Common_Consequences, Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2012-05-11
updated Demonstrative_Examples, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2014-07-30
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2017-11-08
updated Applicable_Platforms, Relationships, White_Box_Definitions

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2019-01-03
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2020-02-24
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-01-31
updated Description

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-04-27
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-06-29
updated Mapping_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2025-12-11
4.19
2025-12-11
updated Weakness_Ordinalities

KDM Analytics
2008-08-29
suggested clarification of description and observed examples, which were vague and inconsistent.

Unrestricted Critical Resource Lock
Unrestricted Lock on Critical Resource