CWE

Information Exposure Through Process Environment

ID: 214		Date: (C)2012-05-14   (M)2022-10-10
Type: weakness		Status: INCOMPLETE
Abstraction Type: Variant

Description

A process is invoked with sensitive arguments, environment variables, or other elements that can be seen by other processes on the operating system.

Extended Description

Many operating systems allow a user to list information about processes that are owned by other users. This information could include command line arguments or environment variable settings. When this data contains sensitive information such as credentials, it might allow other users to launch an attack against the software or related resources.

Applicable Platforms
Language Class: All

Time Of Introduction

• Architecture and Design
• Implementation
• Operation

Common Consequences

Scope	Technical Impact	Notes
Confidentiality	Read application data

Detection Methods
None

Potential Mitigations

Phase	Strategy	Description	Effectiveness	Notes
		Compartmentalize your system to have "safe" areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.

Relationships

Related CWE	Type	View	Chain
CWE-214 ChildOf CWE-895	Category	CWE-888

Demonstrative Examples   (Details)

1. In the Java example below, the password for a keystore file is read from a system property. If the property is defined on the command line when the program is invoked (using the -D... syntax), the password may be displayed in the OS process list.

Observed Examples

1. CVE-2005-1387 : password passed on command line
2. CVE-2005-2291 : password passed on command line
3. CVE-2001-1565 : username/password on command line allows local users to view via "ps" or other process listing programs
4. CVE-2004-1948 : Username/password on command line allows local users to view via "ps" or other process listing programs.
5. CVE-1999-1270 : PGP passphrase provided as command line argument.
6. CVE-2004-1058 : Kernel race condition allows reading of environment variables of a process that is still spawning.

For more examples, refer to CVE relations in the bottom box.

White Box Definitions
None

Black Box Definitions
None

Taxynomy Mappings

Taxynomy	Id	Name	Fit
PLOVER		Process information infoleak to other processes

References:
None