Weakness · Medium

CWE-550: Server-generated Error Message Containing Sensitive Information

What it is

Certain conditions, such as network failure, will cause a server error message to be displayed.

MITRE CWE 4.19.1

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

While error messages in and of themselves are not dangerous, per se, it is what an attacker can glean from them that might cause eventual problems.

What an attacker can do

  • Read Application Data (Confidentiality)

How to prevent it

Architecture and Design

  • Recommendations include designing and adding consistent error handling mechanisms which are capable of handling any user input to your web application, providing meaningful detail to end-users, and preventing error messages that might provide information useful to an attacker from being displayed.

CWE-550 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.