CWE-209: Generation of Error Message Containing Sensitive Information

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

Consequences

• Confidentiality: Read Application Data

How to prevent it

• Implementation: 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.
• Implementation: Handle exceptions internally and do not display errors containing potentially sensitive information to a user.
• Implementation: Use naming conventions and strong types to make it easier to spot when sensitive data is being used. When creating structures, objects, or other complex entities, separate the sensitive and non-sensitive data as much as possible.
• Implementation, Build and Compilation: Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.
• Implementation, Build and Compilation: Debugging information should not make its way into a production release.
• System Configuration: Where available, configure the environment to use less verbose error messages. For example, in PHP, disable the display_errors setting during configuration, or at runtime using the error_reporting() function.
• System Configuration: Create default error pages or messages that do not leak any information.

Recent advisories

• GHSA-vfpm-58rq-9qcg — Vite: First 4 bytes of files outside of `server.fs` setting is exposed by `?vite-wasm-instance`
• EEF-CVE-2026-105283 — Internal error terms inspected into AshTypescript RPC error responses
• GHSA-j92p-c242-7hfx — pyLoad: Unauthenticated access to /web/<path:filename> bypasses authentication on sensitive templates and leaks internal error details via exception attribute typo
• GHSA-x6m4-chr9-cg97 — vm2 leaks absolute host filesystem paths to sandbox code via error stack formatting
• EEF-CVE-2026-82739 — Ash.Resource.Validation.Confirm leaks a confirmed field's stored value in the atomic mismatch error
• EEF-CVE-2026-82733 — Route handler return value echoed into AshTypescript error response
• EEF-CVE-2026-77950 — RPC error handler fails open in AshTypescript, disclosing unredacted errors
• EEF-CVE-2026-82727 — AshPhoenix Form.Auto leaks submitted params in an unknown _union_type error message
• EEF-CVE-2026-75760 — AshAi vectorize change leaks raw embedding-provider errors, including credentials, in a user-facing error
• EEF-CVE-2026-82580 — AshAi echoes raw tool exception messages into the conversation, disclosing internal details
• EEF-CVE-2026-78693 — Incomplete redaction re-attaches the original error path in AshGraphql, leaking internal field names
• GHSA-hwrm-c4cx-rf4j — vLLM: Unauthenticated Internal Path and Username Disclosure via Validation Error Messages
• GHSA-gwfq-86j8-7qhv — rclone: Verbose Stack Trace Disclosure in RC API Error Responses
• GHSA-g6cj-pr64-35w5 — cryptography: PKCS#7 EnvelopedData decryption exposes a Bleichenbacher oracle through distinguishable errors and timing
• GHSA-ppr4-5f46-j9c6 — Budibase: Server Filesystem Existence/Read Oracle via Builder-Controlled MongoDB tlsCertificateKeyFile

All advisories for CWE-209