CWE-256Plaintext Storage of a Password

Description

Common consequences· 1

• Access Control — Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
  Storing a plaintext password in a configuration file allows anyone who can read the file to access the password-protected resource. In some contexts, even storage of a plaintext password in memory is considered a security risk if the password is not cleared immediately after it is used.

Potential mitigations· 3

• [Architecture and Design]Avoid storing passwords in easily accessible locations.
• [Architecture and Design]Consider storing cryptographic hashes of passwords as an alternative to storing in plaintext.
• []A programmer might attempt to remedy the password management problem by obscuring the password with an encoding function, such as base 64 encoding, but this effort does not adequately protect the password because the encoding can be detected and decoded easily.

(incoming)8

Related by meaning· 6

Nearest entities by semantic similarity across the cs-graph corpus.