CWE-209

The product generates an error message that includes sensitive information about its environment, users, or associated data.

Common consequences

• Confidentiality → Read Application Data

Mitigations

• Implementation: 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 informat
• Implementation: Handle exceptions internally and do not display errors containing potentially sensitive information to a user.
• Implementation: 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.
• Implementation, Build and Compilation: Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.
• Implementation, Build and Compilation: Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.
• System Configuration: 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.