Weakness · Medium
CWE-540: Inclusion of Sensitive Information in Source Code
What it is
Source code on a web server or repository often contains sensitive information and should generally not be accessible to users.
- Severity (our rating)
- Medium
- Likelihood of exploit
- Not rated by MITRE
- Introduced during
- Implementation
- Exploited in the wild
- No CVE in CISA's catalog
In more detail
There are situations where it is critical to remove source code from an area or server. For example, obtaining Perl source code on a system allows an attacker to understand the logic of the script and extract extremely useful information such as code bugs or logins and passwords.
What an attacker can do
- Read Application Data (Confidentiality)
How to prevent it
Architecture and Design
- Recommendations include removing this script from the web server and moving it to a location not accessible from the Internet.
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.)
H2 Security
Found it in your code?
We review where it appears, fix it with your team, and check it was not already used against you.
Talk to our teamT Academy
Stop writing it in the first place
Learn to build software and systems without weaknesses like this one, with practice on real hosts in your browser, every objective checked on the machine.
Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.