CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-12171

Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information

Published: Jul 08, 2019 | Modified: Jul 21, 2021
CVSS 3.x
7.8
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
4.3 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Dropbox.exe (and QtWebEngineProcess.exe in the Web Helper) in the Dropbox desktop application 71.4.108.0 store cleartext credentials in memory upon successful login or new account creation. These are not securely freed in the running process.

Weakness

The product stores sensitive information in cleartext within a resource that might be accessible to another control sphere.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Dropbox Dropbox 71.4.108.0 (including) 71.4.108.0 (including)

Extended Description

Because the information is stored in cleartext (i.e., unencrypted), attackers could potentially read it. 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. When organizations adopt cloud services, it can be easier for attackers to access the data from anywhere on the Internet. In some systems/environments such as cloud, the use of “double encryption” (at both the software and hardware layer) might be required, and the developer might be solely responsible for both layers, instead of shared responsibility with the administrator of the broader system/environment.

Potential Mitigations

References