CWE Reference
CWE-614: Sensitive Cookie in HTTPS Session Without 'Secure' Attribute
Official CWE-614 CWE context with Glexia analysis, remediation guidance, related CVEs, and ATT&CK context.
Release 4.20weaknessDraft
Glexia's Take
CWE-614: Sensitive Cookie in HTTPS Session Without 'Secure' Attribute
Sensitive Cookie in HTTPS Session Without 'Secure' Attribute represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Confidentiality: Read Application Data: Omitting the secure flag makes it possible for the user agent to send the cookies in plaintext over an HTTP session.
Developer Pattern
CWE-614 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-614, 4.20.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-614: Sensitive Cookie in HTTPS Session Without 'Secure' Attribute
The Secure attribute for sensitive cookies in HTTPS sessions is not set.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- The snippet of code below, taken from a servlet doPost() method, sets an accountID cookie (sensitive) without calling setSecure(true).
Remediation
- Implementation: Always set the secure attribute when the cookie should be sent via HTTPS only.
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.