Inclusion of Sensitive Information in Source Code

Source code on a web server or repository often contains sensitive information and should generally not be accessible to users.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

Source code on a web server or repository often contains sensitive information and should generally not be accessible to users.

Extended description

There are situations where it is critical to remove source code from an area or server. For example, obtaining Perl source code on a system allows an attacker to understand the logic of the script and extract extremely useful information such as code bugs or logins and passwords.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Read Application Data

Affected security scopes: Confidentiality

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Architecture and Design · System Configuration

Defence to apply across several lifecycle phases

Detail

Recommendations include removing this script from the web server and moving it to a location not accessible from the Internet.

Verification

How is it detected?

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.)