Nombre: Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in Executable

The product stores sensitive information in cleartext in an executable.

Informaciones generales

Modos de introducción

Implementation

Plataformas aplicables

Lenguaje

Clase: Not Language-Specific (Undetermined)

Consecuencias comunes

Alcance	Impacto	Probabilidad
Confidentiality	Read Application Data Note: Attackers can reverse engineer binary code to obtain secret data. This is especially easy when the cleartext is plain ASCII. Even if the information is encoded in a way that is not human-readable, certain techniques could determine which encoding is being used, then decode the information.

Ejemplos observados

Referencias	Descripción
CVE-2005-1794	Product stores RSA private key in a DLL and uses it to sign a certificate, allowing spoofing of servers and Adversary-in-the-Middle (AITM) attacks.
CVE-2001-1527	administration passwords in cleartext in executable

Métodos de detección

Automated Static Analysis

Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)

Notas de mapeo de vulnerabilidades

Justificación : This CWE entry is at the Variant level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Comentario : Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

Patrones de ataque relacionados

CAPEC ID	Nombre del patrón de ataque
CAPEC-37	Retrieve Embedded Sensitive Data An attacker examines a target system to find sensitive data that has been embedded within it. This information can reveal confidential contents, such as account numbers or individual keys/credentials that can be used as an intermediate step in a larger attack.
CAPEC-65	Sniff Application Code An adversary passively sniffs network communications and captures application code bound for an authorized client. Once obtained, they can use it as-is, or through reverse-engineering glean sensitive information or exploit the trust relationship between the client and server. Such code may belong to a dynamic update to the client, a patch being applied to a client component or any such interaction where the client is authorized to communicate with the server.

Notas

Different people use "cleartext" and "plaintext" to mean the same thing: the lack of encryption. However, within cryptography, these have more precise meanings. Plaintext is the information just before it is fed into a cryptographic algorithm, including already-encrypted text. Cleartext is any information that is unencrypted, although it might be in an encoded form that is not easily human-readable (such as base64 encoding).

Envío

Nombre	Organización	Fecha	Fecha de lanzamiento	Version
PLOVER		2006-07-19 +00:00	2006-07-19 +00:00	Draft 3

Modificaciones

Nombre	Organización	Fecha	Comentario
Eric Dalci	Cigital	2008-07-01 +00:00	updated Time_of_Introduction
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2008-09-08 +00:00	updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2011-06-01 +00:00	updated Common_Consequences
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2012-05-11 +00:00	updated Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2013-07-17 +00:00	updated Applicable_Platforms, Description, Name, Potential_Mitigations, Terminology_Notes
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2014-07-30 +00:00	updated Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2017-11-08 +00:00	updated Modes_of_Introduction, Observed_Examples, Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2020-02-24 +00:00	updated Relationships
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2021-07-20 +00:00	updated Observed_Examples
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2023-01-31 +00:00	updated Description
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2023-04-27 +00:00	updated Modes_of_Introduction, Relationships, Time_of_Introduction
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2023-06-29 +00:00	updated Mapping_Notes
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2025-12-11 +00:00	updated Weakness_Ordinalities
CWE Content Team	MITRE	2026-10-28 +00:00	updated Common_Consequences, Description, Detection_Factors

Detalle CWE-318

CWE-318