CWE-209

Mitigation ID: MIT-39

Phase: Implementation

Description:

• Ensure that error messages only contain minimal details that are useful to the intended audience and no one else. The messages need to strike the balance between being too cryptic (which can confuse users) or being too detailed (which may reveal more than intended). The messages should not reveal the methods that were used to determine the error. Attackers can use detailed information to refine or optimize their original attack, thereby increasing their chances of success.
• If errors must be captured in some detail, record them in log messages, but consider what could occur if the log messages can be viewed by attackers. Highly sensitive information such as passwords should never be saved to log files.
• Avoid inconsistent messaging that might accidentally tip off an attacker about internal state, such as whether a user account exists or not.

Mitigation

Phase: Implementation

Description:

• Handle exceptions internally and do not display errors containing potentially sensitive information to a user.

Mitigation ID: MIT-33

Phase: Implementation

Strategy: Attack Surface Reduction

Description:

• Use naming conventions and strong types to make it easier to spot when sensitive data is being used. When creating structures, objects, or other complex entities, separate the sensitive and non-sensitive data as much as possible.

Mitigation ID: MIT-40

Phases: Implementation, Build and Compilation

Strategy: Compilation or Build Hardening

Description:

• Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.

Mitigation ID: MIT-40

Phases: Implementation, Build and Compilation

Strategy: Environment Hardening

Description:

• Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.

Mitigation

Phase: System Configuration

Description:

• Where available, configure the environment to use less verbose error messages. For example, in PHP, disable the display_errors setting during configuration, or at runtime using the error_reporting() function.

Mitigation

Phase: System Configuration

Description:

• Create default error pages or messages that do not leak any information.

CAPEC-215: Fuzzing for application mapping

An attacker sends random, malformed, or otherwise unexpected messages to a target application and observes the application's log or error messages returned. The attacker does not initially know how a target will respond to individual messages but by attempting a large number of message variants they may find a variant that trigger's desired behavior. In this attack, the purpose of the fuzzing is to observe the application's log and error messages, although fuzzing a target can also sometimes cause the target to enter an unstable state, causing a crash.

CAPEC-463: Padding Oracle Crypto Attack

An adversary is able to efficiently decrypt data without knowing the decryption key if a target system leaks data on whether or not a padding error happened while decrypting the ciphertext. A target system that leaks this type of information becomes the padding oracle and an adversary is able to make use of that oracle to efficiently decrypt data without knowing the decryption key by issuing on average 128*b calls to the padding oracle (where b is the number of bytes in the ciphertext block). In addition to performing decryption, an adversary is also able to produce valid ciphertexts (i.e., perform encryption) by using the padding oracle, all without knowing the encryption key.

CAPEC-54: Query System for Information

An adversary, aware of an application's location (and possibly authorized to use the application), probes an application's structure and evaluates its robustness by submitting requests and examining responses. Often, this is accomplished by sending variants of expected queries in the hope that these modified queries might return information beyond what the expected set of queries would provide.

CAPEC-7: Blind SQL Injection

Blind SQL Injection results from an insufficient mitigation for SQL Injection. Although suppressing database error messages are considered best practice, the suppression alone is not sufficient to prevent SQL Injection. Blind SQL Injection is a form of SQL Injection that overcomes the lack of error messages. Without the error messages that facilitate SQL Injection, the adversary constructs input strings that probe the target through simple Boolean SQL expressions. The adversary can determine if the syntax and structure of the injection was successful based on whether the query was executed or not. Applied iteratively, the adversary determines how and where the target is vulnerable to SQL Injection.