CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
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Edit Custom FilterThe product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:
Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:
Information exposures can occur in different ways:
It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an "information exposure," but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.
This table specifies different individual consequences
associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is
violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an
adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about
how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other
consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be
exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to
achieve a different impact.
This table shows the weaknesses and high level categories that are related to this
weakness. These relationships are defined as ChildOf, ParentOf, MemberOf and give insight to
similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition,
relationships such as PeerOf and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar weaknesses that the user
may want to explore.
Relevant to the view "Research Concepts" (CWE-1000)
Relevant to the view "Weaknesses for Simplified Mapping of Published Vulnerabilities" (CWE-1003)
The different Modes of Introduction provide information
about how and when this
weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which
introduction
may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the
given
phase.
This listing shows possible areas for which the given
weakness could appear. These
may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms,
Technologies,
or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given
weakness appears for that instance.
Languages Class: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined Prevalence) Technologies Class: Mobile (Undetermined Prevalence) Example 1 The following code checks validity of the supplied username and password and notifies the user of a successful or failed login. (bad code)
Example Language: Perl
my $username=param('username');
my $password=param('password'); if (IsValidUsername($username) == 1) { if (IsValidPassword($username, $password) == 1)
}
{ print "Login Successful";
}
else { print "Login Failed - incorrect password";
}
else { print "Login Failed - unknown username";
}
In the above code, there are different messages for when an incorrect username is supplied, versus when the username is correct but the password is wrong. This difference enables a potential attacker to understand the state of the login function, and could allow an attacker to discover a valid username by trying different values until the incorrect password message is returned. In essence, this makes it easier for an attacker to obtain half of the necessary authentication credentials. While this type of information may be helpful to a user, it is also useful to a potential attacker. In the above example, the message for both failed cases should be the same, such as: (result)
"Login Failed - incorrect username or password"
Example 2 This code tries to open a database connection, and prints any exceptions that occur. (bad code)
Example Language: PHP
try {
openDbConnection(); }//print exception message that includes exception message and configuration file location catch (Exception $e) { echo 'Caught exception: ', $e->getMessage(), '\n'; }echo 'Check credentials in config file at: ', $Mysql_config_location, '\n'; If an exception occurs, the printed message exposes the location of the configuration file the script is using. An attacker can use this information to target the configuration file (perhaps exploiting a Path Traversal weakness). If the file can be read, the attacker could gain credentials for accessing the database. The attacker may also be able to replace the file with a malicious one, causing the application to use an arbitrary database. Example 3 In the example below, the method getUserBankAccount retrieves a bank account object from a database using the supplied username and account number to query the database. If an SQLException is raised when querying the database, an error message is created and output to a log file. (bad code)
Example Language: Java
public BankAccount getUserBankAccount(String username, String accountNumber) {
BankAccount userAccount = null;
String query = null; try { if (isAuthorizedUser(username)) { } catch (SQLException ex) {query = "SELECT * FROM accounts WHERE owner = " }+ username + " AND accountID = " + accountNumber; DatabaseManager dbManager = new DatabaseManager(); Connection conn = dbManager.getConnection(); Statement stmt = conn.createStatement(); ResultSet queryResult = stmt.executeQuery(query); userAccount = (BankAccount)queryResult.getObject(accountNumber); String logMessage = "Unable to retrieve account information from database,\nquery: " + query; }Logger.getLogger(BankManager.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, logMessage, ex); return userAccount; The error message that is created includes information about the database query that may contain sensitive information about the database or query logic. In this case, the error message will expose the table name and column names used in the database. This data could be used to simplify other attacks, such as SQL injection (CWE-89) to directly access the database. Example 4 This code stores location information about the current user: (bad code)
Example Language: Java
locationClient = new LocationClient(this, this, this);
locationClient.connect(); currentUser.setLocation(locationClient.getLastLocation()); ... catch (Exception e) { AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this); }builder.setMessage("Sorry, this application has experienced an error."); AlertDialog alert = builder.create(); alert.show(); Log.e("ExampleActivity", "Caught exception: " + e + " While on User:" + User.toString()); When the application encounters an exception it will write the user object to the log. Because the user object contains location information, the user's location is also written to the log. Example 5 The following is an actual MySQL error statement: (result)
Example Language: SQL
Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Access denied for user: 'root@localhost' (Using password: N1nj4) in /usr/local/www/wi-data/includes/database.inc on line 4
The error clearly exposes the database credentials. Example 6 This code displays some information on a web page. (bad code)
Example Language: JSP
Social Security Number: <%= ssn %></br>Credit Card Number: <%= ccn %>
The code displays a user's credit card and social security numbers, even though they aren't absolutely necessary. Example 7 The following program changes its behavior based on a debug flag. (bad code)
Example Language: JSP
<% if (Boolean.getBoolean("debugEnabled")) {
%>
User account number: <%= acctNo %> <% } %> The code writes sensitive debug information to the client browser if the "debugEnabled" flag is set to true . Example 8 This code uses location to determine the user's current US State location. First the application must declare that it requires the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission in the application's manifest.xml: (bad code)
Example Language: XML
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION"/>
During execution, a call to getLastLocation() will return a location based on the application's location permissions. In this case the application has permission for the most accurate location possible: (bad code)
Example Language: Java
locationClient = new LocationClient(this, this, this);
locationClient.connect(); Location userCurrLocation; userCurrLocation = locationClient.getLastLocation(); deriveStateFromCoords(userCurrLocation); While the application needs this information, it does not need to use the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission, as the ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION permission will be sufficient to identify which US state the user is in.
This MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that
reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a
weakness fits within the context of external information sources.
Maintenance
As a result of mapping analysis in the 2020 Top 25 and more recent versions, this weakness is under review, since it is frequently misused in mapping to cover many problems that lead to loss of confidentiality. See Mapping Notes, Extended Description, and Alternate Terms.
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