CWE
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CWE-200 Individual Dictionary Definition (Draft 9)

Information Leak (Information Disclosure)
Weakness ID
Status: Incomplete

200 (Weakness Class)

Description

Summary

An information leak is the intentional or unintentional disclosure of information that either (1) is regarded as sensitive within the product's own functionality, such as a private message, or (2) provides information about the product or its environment that could be useful in an attack but is normally not available to the attacker, such as the installation path of a product that is remotely accessible. Many information leaks are resultant (e.g. path disclosure in PHP script error), but they can also be primary (e.g. timing discrepancies in crypto). There are many different types of problems that involve information leaks. Their severity can range widely depending on the type of information that is leaked.

Potential Mitigations

Compartmentalize your system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.

Relationships
NatureTypeIDName
ChildOfCategoryCategory199Information Management Errors
ChildOfViewView629
ChildOfViewView635
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant201Information Leak Through Sent Data
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant202Privacy Leak through Data Queries
ParentOfWeakness ClassWeakness ClassWeakness Class203Discrepancy Information Leaks
ParentOfWeakness BaseWeakness BaseWeakness Base209Error Message Information Leaks
ParentOfWeakness BaseWeakness BaseWeakness Base212Cross-boundary Cleansing Information Leak
ParentOfWeakness BaseWeakness BaseWeakness Base213Intended Information Leak
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant214Process Environment Information Leak
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant215Information Leak Through Debug Information
ParentOfWeakness BaseWeakness BaseWeakness Base226Sensitive Information Uncleared Before Release
ParentOfWeakness BaseWeakness BaseWeakness Base497Information Leak of System Data
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant498Information Leak through Class Cloning
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant499Serializable Class Containing Sensitive Data
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant524Information Leak Through Caching
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant526Information Leak Through Environmental Variables
ParentOfWeakness ClassWeakness ClassWeakness Class538File and Directory Information Leaks
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant598Information Leak Through Query Strings in GET Request
ParentOfWeakness VariantWeakness VariantWeakness Variant612Information Leak Through Indexing of Private Data
Source Taxonomies

PLOVER - Information Leak (information disclosure)

Applicable Platforms

All

Related Attack Patterns
CAPEC-IDAttack Pattern Name
79Using Slashes in Alternate Encoding
22Exploiting Trust in Client (aka Make the Client Invisible)
13Subverting Environment Variable Values
60Reusing Session IDs (aka Session Replay)
59Session Credential Falsification through Prediction
Page Last Updated: April 22, 2008