CWE-312: Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information

Description

The product stores sensitive information in cleartext within a resource that might be accessible to another control sphere.

Abstraction: BaseA weakness specific enough to point to detection and prevention methods.
Likelihood of exploit: Not rated by MITRE
Status: Draft

Common consequences

Confidentiality
Read Application Data
An attacker with access to the system could read sensitive information stored in cleartext (i.e., unencrypted). Even if the information is encoded in a way that is not human-readable, certain techniques could determine which encoding is being used, then decode the information.

Potential mitigations

ImplementationSystem ConfigurationOperation
When storing data in the cloud (e.g., S3 buckets, Azure blobs, Google Cloud Storage, etc.), use the provider's controls to encrypt the data at rest.
ImplementationSystem ConfigurationOperation
In some systems/environments such as cloud, the use of double encryption (at both the software and hardware layer) might be required, and the developer might be solely responsible for both layers, instead of shared responsibility with the administrator of the broader system/environment.

Related weaknesses

Parent weaknesses

Child weaknesses

CAPEC attack patterns that exploit it

CAPEC-37Retrieve Embedded Sensitive Data

Common consequences

Confidentiality

Read Application Data

An attacker with access to the system could read sensitive information stored in cleartext (i.e., unencrypted). Even if the information is encoded in a way that is not human-readable, certain techniques could determine which encoding is being used, then decode the information.

Potential mitigations

ImplementationSystem ConfigurationOperation

When storing data in the cloud (e.g., S3 buckets, Azure blobs, Google Cloud Storage, etc.), use the provider's controls to encrypt the data at rest.

ImplementationSystem ConfigurationOperation

In some systems/environments such as cloud, the use of double encryption (at both the software and hardware layer) might be required, and the developer might be solely responsible for both layers, instead of shared responsibility with the administrator of the broader system/environment.