Weakness · Medium
CWE-7: J2EE Misconfiguration: Missing Custom Error Page
What it is
The default error page of a web application should not display sensitive information about the product.
- 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
A Web application must define a default error page for 4xx errors (e.g. 404), 5xx (e.g. 500) errors and catch java.lang.Throwable exceptions to prevent attackers from mining information from the application container's built-in error response. When an attacker explores a web site looking for vulnerabilities, the amount of information that the site provides is crucial to the eventual success or failure of any attempted attacks.
What an attacker can do
- Read Application Data (Confidentiality)
How to prevent it
Implementation
- Handle exceptions appropriately in source code.
- Always define appropriate error pages. The application configuration should specify a default error page in order to guarantee that the application will never leak error messages to an attacker. Handling standard HTTP error codes is useful and user-friendly in addition to being a good security practice, and a good configuration will also define a last-chance error handler that catches any exception that could possibly be thrown by the application.
- Do not attempt to process an error or attempt to mask it.
- Verify return values are correct and do not supply sensitive information about the system.
H2 Security
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Start freeSource: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.