CWE-615: Inclusion of Sensitive Information in Source Code Comments

Description

While adding general comments is very useful, some programmers tend to leave important data, such as: filenames related to the web application, old links or links which were not meant to be browsed by users, old code fragments, etc.

Extended Description

An attacker who finds these comments can map the application's structure and files, expose hidden parts of the site, and study the fragments of code to reverse engineer the application, which may help develop further attacks against the site.

ThreatScore

Threat Mapped score: 0.0

Industry: Finiancial

Threat priority: Unclassified

Observed Examples (CVEs)

CVE: CVE-2007-6197

Version numbers and internal hostnames leaked in HTML comments.
CVE: CVE-2007-4072

CMS places full pathname of server in HTML comment.
CVE: CVE-2009-2431

blog software leaks real username in HTML comment.

Related Attack Patterns (CAPEC)

N/A

Attack TTPs

N/A

Modes of Introduction

Phase	Note
Implementation	N/A

Common Consequences

Impact: Read Application Data — Notes:

Potential Mitigations

Distribution: Remove comments which have sensitive information about the design/implementation of the application. Some of the comments may be exposed to the user and affect the security posture of the application. (N/A)

Applicable Platforms

None listed.

Demonstrative Examples

Intro: The following comment, embedded in a JSP, will be displayed in the resulting HTML output.

<!-- FIXME: calling this with more than 30 args kills the JDBC server -->

Notes

No notes available.

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