COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-213

Exposure of Sensitive Information Due to Incompatible Policies

The product's intended functionality exposes information to certain actors in accordance with the developer's security policy, but this information is regarded as sensitive according to the intended security policies of other stakeholders such as the product's administrator, users, or others whose information is being processed.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product's intended functionality exposes information to certain actors in accordance with the developer's security policy, but this information is regarded as sensitive according to the intended security policies of other stakeholders such as the product's administrator, users, or others whose information is being processed.

Extended description

When handling information, the developer must consider whether the information is regarded as sensitive by different stakeholders, such as users or administrators. Each stakeholder effectively has its own intended security policy that the product is expected to uphold. When a developer does not treat that information as sensitive, this can introduce a vulnerability that violates the expectations of the product's users.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Policy

This can occur when the product's policy does not account for all relevant stakeholders, or when the policies of other stakeholders are not interpreted properly.

Lifecycle phase

Requirements

This can occur when requirements do not explicitly account for all relevant stakeholders.

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

Communications or data exchange frameworks may be chosen that exchange or provide access to more information than strictly needed.

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

This can occur when the developer does not properly track the flow of sensitive information and how it is exposed, e.g., via an API.

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Read Application Data

Affected security scopes: Confidentiality

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

  • Follow secure coding guidelines for input handling and boundary checking.
  • Enforce strict security reviews and automated static analysis (SAST) checks.