COMMON WEAKNESS ENUMERATIONDraft

CWE-549

Missing Password Field Masking

The product does not mask passwords during entry, increasing the potential for attackers to observe and capture passwords.

Abstraction

Base

Structure

Simple

Likelihood of Exploit

Medium

Understand the problem

What is the problem?

The product does not mask passwords during entry, increasing the potential for attackers to observe and capture passwords.

Root cause

How and when does the problem arise?

Lifecycle phase

Implementation

Risk

What does successful exploitation lead to?

Bypass Protection Mechanism

Affected security scopes: Access Control

Defence

How is it prevented and fixed?

Implementation · Requirements

Defence to apply across several lifecycle phases

Detail
Recommendations include requiring all password fields in your web application be masked to prevent other users from seeing this information.

Verification

How is it detected?

Automated Static Analysis

High
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.)