CWE-532: Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File
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Example 1 In the following code snippet, a user's full name and credit card number are written to a log file. (bad code)
Example Language: Java
logger.info("Username: " + usernme + ", CCN: " + ccn);
Example 2 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 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. Note: this is a curated list of examples for users to understand the variety of ways in which this weakness can be introduced. It is not a complete list of all CVEs that are related to this CWE entry.
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