Generation of Error Message Containing Sensitive Information
Generation of Error Message Containing Sensitive Information
CWE-209
Overtime trend (NVD)
CVSS severity (NVD, All Time)
Per technology (GHSA, All time)
- 34%-Composer
- 22%-Pip
- 20%-Maven
- 21%-Others
Short description
Extended description
The sensitive information may be valuable information on its own (such as a password), or it may be useful for launching other, more serious attacks. The error message may be created in different ways:
An attacker may use the contents of error messages to help launch another, more focused attack. For example, an attempt to exploit a path traversal weakness (CWE-22) might yield the full pathname of the installed application. In turn, this could be used to select the proper number of ".." sequences to navigate to the targeted file. An attack using SQL injection (CWE-89) might not initially succeed, but an error message could reveal the malformed query, which would expose query logic and possibly even passwords or other sensitive information used within the query.
- self-generated: the source code explicitly constructs the error message and delivers it
- externally-generated: the external environment, such as a language interpreter, handles the error and constructs its own message, whose contents are not under direct control by the programmer
Best practices to prevent this CWE
Phase: Implementation
Ensure that error messages only contain minimal details that are useful to the intended audience and no one else. The messages need to strike the balance between being too cryptic (which can confuse users) or being too detailed (which may reveal more than intended). The messages should not reveal the methods that were used to determine the error. Attackers can use detailed information to refine or optimize their original attack, thereby increasing their chances of success.
If errors must be captured in some detail, record them in log messages, but consider what could occur if the log messages can be viewed by attackers. Highly sensitive information such as passwords should never be saved to log files.
Avoid inconsistent messaging that might accidentally tip off an attacker about internal state, such as whether a user account exists or not.
Phase: Implementation
Handle exceptions internally and do not display errors containing potentially sensitive information to a user.
Phase: Implementation
Strategy: Attack Surface Reduction
Use naming conventions and strong types to make it easier to spot when sensitive data is being used. When creating structures, objects, or other complex entities, separate the sensitive and non-sensitive data as much as possible.
Effectiveness: Defense in Depth
Phase: Implementation; Build and Compilation
Strategy: Compilation or Build Hardening
Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.
Phase: Implementation; Build and Compilation
Strategy: Environment Hardening
Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.
Phase: System Configuration
Where available, configure the environment to use less verbose error messages. For example, in PHP, disable the display_errors setting during configuration, or at runtime using the error_reporting() function.
Phase: System Configuration
Create default error pages or messages that do not leak any information.
