COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-614

Sensitive Cookie in HTTPS Session Without 'Secure' Attribute

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

Abstraction

Variant

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

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

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

Omitting the secure flag makes it possible for the user agent to send the cookies in plaintext over an HTTP session.

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Implementation

Implementation-phase defence

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

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.)

MITRE diagram

Weakness relationships and flow

CWE-614 MITRE diagramı