Weakness · Medium
CWE-530: Exposure of Backup File to an Unauthorized Control Sphere
What it is
A backup file is stored in a directory or archive that is made accessible to unauthorized actors.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Operation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
Often, older backup files are renamed with an extension such as .~bk to distinguish them from production files. The source code for old files that have been renamed in this manner and left in the webroot can often be retrieved. This renaming may have been performed automatically by the web server, or manually by the administrator.
What an attacker can do
- Read Application Data (Confidentiality)
How to prevent it
Policy
- Recommendations include implementing a security policy within your organization that prohibits backing up web application source code in the webroot.
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.