CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-21313

Generation of Error Message Containing Sensitive Information

Published: Jan 09, 2024 | Modified: Nov 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Windows TCP/IP Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Weakness

The product generates an error message that includes sensitive information about its environment, users, or associated data.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Windows_10_1507 Microsoft * 10.0.10240.20402 (excluding)
Windows_10_1607 Microsoft * 10.0.14393.6614 (excluding)
Windows_10_1809 Microsoft * 10.0.17763.5329 (excluding)
Windows_10_21h2 Microsoft * 10.0.19044.3930 (excluding)
Windows_10_22h2 Microsoft * 10.0.19045.3930 (excluding)
Windows_11_21h2 Microsoft * 10.0.22000.2713 (excluding)
Windows_11_22h2 Microsoft * 10.0.22621.3007 (excluding)
Windows_11_23h2 Microsoft * 10.0.22631.3007 (excluding)
Windows_server_2008 Microsoft –sp2 (including) –sp2 (including)
Windows_server_2008 Microsoft r2-sp1 (including) r2-sp1 (including)
Windows_server_2012 Microsoft - (including) - (including)
Windows_server_2012 Microsoft r2 (including) r2 (including)
Windows_server_2016 Microsoft * 10.0.14393.6614 (excluding)
Windows_server_2019 Microsoft * 10.0.17763.5329 (excluding)
Windows_server_2022 Microsoft * 10.0.20348.2227 (excluding)
Windows_server_2022_23h2 Microsoft * 10.0.25398.643 (excluding)

Extended Description

The sensitive information may be valuable information on its own (such as a password), or it may be useful for launching other, more serious attacks. The error message may be created in different ways:

An attacker may use the contents of error messages to help launch another, more focused attack. For example, an attempt to exploit a path traversal weakness (CWE-22) might yield the full pathname of the installed application. In turn, this could be used to select the proper number of “..” sequences to navigate to the targeted file. An attack using SQL injection (CWE-89) might not initially succeed, but an error message could reveal the malformed query, which would expose query logic and possibly even passwords or other sensitive information used within the query.

Potential Mitigations

  • Ensure that error messages only contain minimal details that are useful to the intended audience and no one else. The messages need to strike the balance between being too cryptic (which can confuse users) or being too detailed (which may reveal more than intended). The messages should not reveal the methods that were used to determine the error. Attackers can use detailed information to refine or optimize their original attack, thereby increasing their chances of success.
  • If errors must be captured in some detail, record them in log messages, but consider what could occur if the log messages can be viewed by attackers. Highly sensitive information such as passwords should never be saved to log files.
  • Avoid inconsistent messaging that might accidentally tip off an attacker about internal state, such as whether a user account exists or not.

References