Weakness · Medium

CWE-202: Exposure of Sensitive Information Through Data Queries

What it is

When trying to keep information confidential, an attacker can often infer some of the information by using statistics.

Likelihood of exploit: MediumMITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
Medium
Likelihood of exploit
Medium
Introduced during
Architecture and Design, Implementation
Exploited in the wild
No CVE in CISA's catalog

In more detail

In situations where data should not be tied to individual users, but a large number of users should be able to make queries that "scrub" the identity of users, it may be possible to get information about a user -- e.g., by specifying search terms that are known to be unique to that user.

What an attacker can do

  • Read Files or Directories (Confidentiality)
  • Read Application Data (Confidentiality)

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design

  • This is a complex topic. See the for a good discussion of best practices.

CWE-202 on MITRE's CWE site

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Source: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.