The product declares a critical variable, field, or member to be public when intended security policy requires it to be private.
This issue makes it more difficult to maintain the product, which indirectly affects security by making it more difficult or time-consuming to find and/or fix vulnerabilities. It also might make it easier to introduce vulnerabilities.
Threat Mapped score: 0.0
Industry: Finiancial
Threat priority: Unclassified
CVE: CVE-2010-3860
variables declared public allow remote read of system properties such as user name and home directory.
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| Phase | Note |
|---|---|
| Implementation | N/A |
Intro: The following example declares a critical variable public, making it accessible to anyone with access to the object in which it is contained.
Body: Instead, the critical data should be declared private.
public: char* password;Intro: The following example shows a basic user account class that includes member variables for the username and password as well as a public constructor for the class and a public method to authorize access to the user account.
Body: However, the member variables username and password are declared public and therefore will allow access and changes to the member variables to anyone with access to the object. These member variables should be declared private as shown below to prevent unauthorized access and changes.
#define MAX_PASSWORD_LENGTH 15 #define MAX_USERNAME_LENGTH 15 class UserAccount { public: UserAccount(char *username, char *password) { if ((strlen(username) > MAX_USERNAME_LENGTH) || (strlen(password) > MAX_PASSWORD_LENGTH)) { ExitError("Invalid username or password"); } strcpy(this->username, username); strcpy(this->password, password); } int authorizeAccess(char *username, char *password) { if ((strlen(username) > MAX_USERNAME_LENGTH) || (strlen(password) > MAX_PASSWORD_LENGTH)) { ExitError("Invalid username or password"); } // if the username and password in the input parameters are equal to // the username and password of this account class then authorize access if (strcmp(this->username, username) || strcmp(this->password, password)) return 0; // otherwise do not authorize access else return 1; } char username[MAX_USERNAME_LENGTH+1]; char password[MAX_PASSWORD_LENGTH+1]; };