CWE-214: Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive… | Glexia
CWE-214 (Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive Information) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-214: Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive Information
Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive Information represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Confidentiality: Read Application Data
Developer Pattern
CWE-214 is the kind of defect developers can usually prevent with explicit validation, safer framework defaults, and tests that exercise hostile input or unsafe state transitions.
Automation confidence
high confidence from CWE-214, 4.20.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-214: Invocation of Process Using Visible Sensitive Information
A process is invoked with sensitive command-line arguments, environment variables, or other elements that can be seen by other processes on the operating system.
Many operating systems allow a user to list information about processes that are owned by other users. Other users could see information such as command line arguments or environment variable settings. When this data contains sensitive information such as credentials, it might allow other users to launch an attack against the product or related resources.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- In the example below, the password for a keystore file is read from a system property. If the property is defined on the command line when the program is invoked (using the -D... syntax), the password may be displayed in the OS process list.
Remediation
- Use safe APIs
- Centralize the control
- Add regression tests
- Review logs and telemetry for attempted abuse
Detection
- Code review
- SAST
- DAST
- Focused regression tests
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.