CWE-311Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data

Description

Common consequences· 2

• Confidentiality — Read Application Data
  If the application does not use a secure channel, such as SSL, to exchange sensitive information, it is possible for an attacker with access to the network traffic to sniff packets from the connection and uncover the data. This attack is not technically difficult, but does require physical access to some portion of the network over which the sensitive data travels. This access is usually somewhere near where the user is connected to the network (such as a colleague on the company network) but can be anywhere along the path from the user to the end server.
• Confidentiality / Integrity — Modify Application Data
  Omitting the use of encryption in any program which transfers data over a network of any kind should be considered on par with delivering the data sent to each user on the local networks of both the sender and receiver. Worse, this omission allows for the injection of data into a stream of communication between two parties -- with no means for the victims to separate valid data from invalid. In this day of widespread network attacks and password collection sniffers, it is an unnecessary risk to omit encryption from the design of any system which might benefit from it.

Potential mitigations· 5

• [Requirements]Clearly specify which data or resources are valuable enough that they should be protected by encryption. Require that any transmission or storage of this data/resource should use well-vetted encryption algorithms.
• [Architecture and Design]
• [Architecture and Design]
• [Architecture and Design]
• [Implementation, Architecture and Design]When using industry-approved techniques, use them correctly. Don't cut corners by skipping resource-intensive steps (CWE-325). These steps are often essential for preventing common attacks.

Related CAPEC attack patterns· 14

Exploits (incoming)14

Compliance frameworks addressing this (incoming)12

(incoming)6

Related by meaning· 6

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