CWE-530: Exposure of Backup File to an Unauthorized… | Glexia
CWE-530 (Exposure of Backup File to an Unauthorized Control Sphere) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-530: Exposure of Backup File to an Unauthorized Control Sphere
Exposure of Backup File to an Unauthorized Control Sphere represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Confidentiality: Read Application Data: At a minimum, an attacker who retrieves this file would have all the information contained in it, whether that be database calls, the format of parameters accepted by the application, or simply information regarding the architectural structure of your site.
Developer Pattern
CWE-530 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-530, 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-530: Exposure of Backup File to an Unauthorized Control Sphere
A backup file is stored in a directory or archive that is made accessible to unauthorized actors.
Often, older backup files are renamed with an extension such as .~bk to distinguish them from production files. The source code for old files that have been renamed in this manner and left in the webroot can often be retrieved. This renaming may have been performed automatically by the web server, or manually by the administrator.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- Missing validation
- Unsafe defaults
- Insufficient authorization or memory-safety invariant
Remediation
- Policy: Recommendations include implementing a security policy within your organization that prohibits backing up web application source code in the webroot.
Detection
- 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.)
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.