Weakness · High
CWE-1295: Debug Messages Revealing Unnecessary Information
What it is
The product fails to adequately prevent the revealing of unnecessary and potentially sensitive system information within debugging messages.
- Severity (our rating)
- High
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
Debug messages are messages that help troubleshoot an issue by revealing the internal state of the system. For example, debug data in design can be exposed through internal memory array dumps or boot logs through interfaces like UART via TAP commands, scan chain, etc. Thus, the more information contained in a debug message, the easier it is to debug. However, there is also the risk of revealing information that could help an attacker either decipher a vulnerability, and/or gain a better understanding of the system. Thus, this extra information could lower the "security by obscurity" factor. While "security by obscurity" alone is insufficient, it can help as a part of "Defense-in-depth".
What an attacker can do
- Read Memory (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control, Accountability, Authentication, Authorization, Non-Repudiation)
- Bypass Protection Mechanism (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control, Accountability, Authentication, Authorization, Non-Repudiation)
- Gain Privileges or Assume Identity (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control, Accountability, Authentication, Authorization, Non-Repudiation)
- Varies by Context (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Access Control, Accountability, Authentication, Authorization, Non-Repudiation)
How to prevent it
Implementation
- Ensure that a debug message does not reveal any unnecessary information during the debug process for the intended response.
How to find it
- Automated Static Analysis. Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.