CWE-535: Exposure of Information Through Shell Error Message
Learn about CWE-535 (Exposure of Information Through Shell Error Message), its security impact, exploitation methods, and prevention guidelines.
What is Exposure of Information Through Shell Error Message?
• Overview: Exposure of Information Through Shell Error Message occurs when a web application reveals sensitive information through command shell error messages, typically due to unhandled exceptions. This can provide attackers with insights into the system's inner workings, potentially leading to unauthorized access.
• Exploitation Methods:
- Attackers can trigger specific inputs or conditions causing unhandled exceptions that expose shell error messages.
- Common attack patterns include input manipulation to induce errors, such as SQL injection or malformed requests.
• Security Impact:
- Direct consequences include leakage of sensitive system information, such as file paths, system configurations, or other internal details.
- Potential cascading effects involve further exploitation using the exposed information to escalate privileges or conduct more targeted attacks.
- Business impact includes data breaches, loss of customer trust, and potential financial penalties due to regulatory non-compliance.
• Prevention Guidelines:
- Specific code-level fixes include implementing comprehensive exception handling to ensure errors are captured and properly logged without revealing sensitive information to users.
- Security best practices involve validating and sanitizing all user inputs and using secure coding techniques to minimize the risk of injection attacks.
- Recommended tools and frameworks include using web application firewalls (WAFs) to filter out malicious inputs and employing security-focused frameworks that provide robust error-handling mechanisms.
Technical Details
Likelihood of Exploit: Not specified
Affected Languages: Not specified
Affected Technologies: Not specified