Weakness · Medium

CWE-614: Sensitive Cookie in HTTPS Session Without 'Secure' Attribute

What it is

The Secure attribute for sensitive cookies in HTTPS sessions is not set.

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

What an attacker can do

  • Read Application Data (Confidentiality)

How to prevent it

Implementation

  • Always set the secure attribute when the cookie should be sent via HTTPS only.

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.)

CWE-614 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.