Weak Encoding for Password

Obscuring a password with a trivial encoding does not protect the password.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

Obscuring a password with a trivial encoding does not protect the password.

Extended description

Password management issues occur when a password is stored in plaintext in an application's properties or configuration file. A programmer can attempt to remedy the password management problem by obscuring the password with an encoding function, such as base 64 encoding, but this effort does not adequately protect the password.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Architecture and Design

COMMISSION: This weakness refers to an incorrect design related to an architectural security tactic.

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Gain Privileges or Assume Identity

Affected security scopes: Access Control

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

All phases

General mitigation and defence approach

Detail

Passwords should be encrypted with keys that are at least 128 bits in length for adequate security.

Verification

How is it detected?

Automated Static Analysis

High

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.)