CWE Reference

CWE-311: Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data

Official CWE-311 CWE context with Glexia analysis, remediation guidance, related CVEs, and ATT&CK context.

Release 4.20weaknessDraft

Glexia's Take

CWE-311: Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data

Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.

Executive Impact

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.

Developer Pattern

CWE-311 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.

Confidence

high confidence from CWE-311, 4.20.

Official CWE Definition

CWE-311: Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data

The product does not encrypt sensitive or critical information before storage or transmission.

Type: weakness
Abstraction: Class
Status: Draft
Source: MITRE CWE definition

Developer And Remediation Guidance

How teams prevent and detect this weakness

Causes

This code writes a user's login information to a cookie so the user does not have to login again later. The code stores the user's username and password in plaintext in a cookie on the user's machine. This exposes the user's login information if their computer is compromised by an attacker. Even if the user's machine is not compromised, this weakness combined with cross-site scripting (CWE-79) could allow an attacker to remotely copy the cookie.,Also note this example code also exhibits Plaintext Storage in a Cookie (CWE-315).
The following code attempts to establish a connection, read in a password, then store it to a buffer. While successful, the program does not encrypt the data before writing it to a buffer, possibly exposing it to unauthorized actors.
The following code attempts to establish a connection to a site to communicate sensitive information. Though a connection is successfully made, the connection is unencrypted and it is possible that all sensitive data sent to or received from the server will be read by unintended actors.

Remediation

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: [object Object]
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.
Implementation: Use naming conventions and strong types to make it easier to spot when sensitive data is being used. When creating structures, objects, or other complex entities, separate the sensitive and non-sensitive data as much as possible.

Detection

Manual Analysis: The characterizaton of sensitive data often requires domain-specific understanding, so manual methods are useful. However, manual efforts might not achieve desired code coverage within limited time constraints. Black box methods may produce artifacts (e.g. stored data or unencrypted network transfer) that require manual evaluation.
Automated Analysis: Automated measurement of the entropy of an input/output source may indicate the use or lack of encryption, but human analysis is still required to distinguish intentionally-unencrypted data (e.g. metadata) from sensitive data.
Manual Static Analysis - Binary or Bytecode: [object Object]
Dynamic Analysis with Automated Results Interpretation: [object Object]
Dynamic Analysis with Manual Results Interpretation: [object Object]
Manual Static Analysis - Source Code: [object Object]
Automated Static Analysis - Source Code: [object Object]
Architecture or Design Review: [object Object]

Mappings

Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context

Related CWEs

Related CVEs

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ATT&CK Relevance

ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.