BaseIncomplete

CWE-512Spyware

Category: other

Description

The product collects personally identifiable information about a human user or the user's activities, but the product accesses this information using other resources besides itself, and it does not require that user's explicit approval or direct input into the product. "Spyware" is a commonly used term with many definitions and interpretations. In general, it is meant to refer to products that collect information or install functionality that human users might not allow if they were fully aware of the actions being taken by the software. For example, a user might expect that tax software would collect a social security number and include it when filing a tax return, but that same user would not expect gaming software to obtain the social security number from that tax software's data.

Common consequences· 1

  • Confidentiality — Read Application Data

Potential mitigations· 2

  • [Operation]Use spyware detection and removal software.
  • [Installation]Always verify the integrity of the product that is being installed.

References

  1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/512.html

Related by meaning· 6

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

CWE
Trojan Horse
CWE
External Control of Critical State Data
CWE
Exposure of Private Personal Information to an Unauthorized Actor
CWE
Insufficiently Protected Credentials
CWE
Omission of Security-relevant Information
CWE
Sensitive Cookie Without 'HttpOnly' Flag
Sourced from MITRE CWE 4.20. Curated for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.