CWE

Information Exposure Through Servlet Runtime Error Message

ID: 536		Date: (C)2012-05-14   (M)2022-10-10
Type: weakness		Status: INCOMPLETE
Abstraction Type: Variant

Description

A servlet error message indicates that there exists an unhandled exception in your web application code and may provide useful information to an attacker.

Applicable Platforms
None

Time Of Introduction

• Implementation

Common Consequences

Scope	Technical Impact	Notes
Confidentiality	Read application data	The error message may contain the location of the file in which the offending function is located. This may disclose the web root's absolute path as well as give the attacker the location of application files or configuration information. It may even disclose the portion of code that failed. In many cases, an attacker can use the data to launch further attacks against the system.

Detection Methods
None

Potential Mitigations

Phase	Strategy	Description	Effectiveness	Notes
		Do not expose sensitive error information to the user.

Relationships

Related CWE	Type	View	Chain
CWE-536 ChildOf CWE-895	Category	CWE-888

Demonstrative Examples   (Details)

1. The following servlet code does not catch runtime exceptions, meaning that if such an exception were to occur, the container may display potentially dangerous information (such as a full stack trace).

White Box Definitions
None

Black Box Definitions
None

Taxynomy Mappings

Taxynomy	Id	Name	Fit
Anonymous Tool Vendor (under NDA)

References:
None