VariantIncomplete

CWE-539Use of Persistent Cookies Containing Sensitive Information

Category: data-exposure

Description

The web application uses persistent cookies, but the cookies contain sensitive information. Cookies are small bits of data that are sent by the web application but stored locally in the browser. This lets the application use the cookie to pass information between pages and store variable information. The web application controls what information is stored in a cookie and how it is used. Typical types of information stored in cookies are session identifiers, personalization and customization information, and in rare cases even usernames to enable automated logins. There are two different types of cookies: session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies just live in the browser's memory and are not stored anywhere, but persistent cookies are stored on the browser's hard drive. This can cause security and privacy issues depending on the information stored in the cookie and how it is accessed.

Common consequences· 1

  • Confidentiality — Read Application Data

Potential mitigations· 1

  • [Architecture and Design]Do not store sensitive information in persistent cookies.

Related CAPEC attack patterns· 5

CAPEC-21CAPEC-31CAPEC-39CAPEC-59CAPEC-60

References

  1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/539.html

Exploits (incoming)5

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
AttackPatternExploitation of Trusted Identifierscapec-21100%live
AttackPatternReusing Session IDs (aka Session Replay)capec-60100%live
AttackPatternSession Credential Falsification through Predictioncapec-59100%live
AttackPatternAccessing/Intercepting/Modifying HTTP Cookiescapec-31100%live
AttackPatternManipulating Opaque Client-based Data Tokenscapec-39100%live

(incoming)1

TypeTargetConfidenceTier
VulnerabilityCVE-2025-27673cve-2025-276730%live

Related by meaning· 6

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

CWE
Reliance on Cookies without Validation and Integrity Checking in a Security Decision
CWE
Use of Web Browser Cache Containing Sensitive Information
CWE
Sensitive Cookie Without 'HttpOnly' Flag
CWE
Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in a Cookie
CWE
Reliance on Cookies without Validation and Integrity Checking
CWE
Sensitive Cookie with Improper SameSite Attribute
Sourced from MITRE CWE 4.20. Curated for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.