In Search Guard FLX versions 3.1.1 and earlier, Field-Level Security (FLS) rules are improperly enforced on object-valued fields.
When an FLS exclusion rule (e.g., ~field) is applied to a field which contains an object as its value, the object is correctly removed from the _source returned by search operations. However, the object members (i.e., child attributes) remain accessible to search queries. This exposure allows adversaries to infer or reconstruct the original contents of the excluded object.
Workaround - If you cannot upgrade immediately and FLS exclusion rules are used for object valued attributes (like ~object), add an additional exclusion rule for the members of the object (like ~object.*).
The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:
Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:
Information exposures can occur in different ways:
It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.