Selection and holding of items from a limited inventory or stock, but which are never actually bought, or paid for, or confirmed, such that other users are unable to buy/ pay/confirm the items themselves. It differs from OAT-005 Scalping in that the goods or services are never actually acquired by the attacker.
Denial of Inventory is most commonly thought of as taking ecommerce items out of circulation by adding many of them to a cart/basket; the attacker never actually proceeds to checkout to buy them but contributes to a possible stock-out condition. A variation of this automated threat event is making reservations (e.g. hotel rooms, restaurant tables, holiday bookings, flight seats), and/or click-and-collect without payment. But this exhaustion of inventory availability also occurs in other types of web application such as in the assignment of non-goods like service allocations, product rations, availability slots, queue positions, and budget apportionments.
If server resources are reduced see OAT-015 Denial of Service instead. Like OAT-005 Scalping , Denial of Inventory also reduces the availability of goods or services.
Other Names and Examples
Hoarding; Hold all attack; Inventory depletion; Inventory exhaustion; Stock exhaustion
