Sensitive Information Disclosure - Email

Description

Sensitive Information Disclosure vulnerability related to email addresses occurs when an application inadvertently exposes users' email addresses to unauthorized parties. This can happen due to improper access controls, insecure storage mechanisms, or vulnerabilities in the application's code. To mitigate this risk, developers should implement proper data protection measures, including encryption of email addresses and strict access controls to limit who can view this sensitive information. Regular security audits and testing can help identify and address any potential vulnerabilities in the system.

Remediation

Do the following, at a minimum, and consult the references: * Classify data processed, stored or transmitted by an application. Identify which data is sensitive according to privacy laws, regulatory requirements, or business needs. * Apply controls as per the classification. * Don’t store sensitive data unnecessarily. Discard it as soon as possible or use PCI DSS-compliant tokenization or even truncation. Data that is not retained cannot be stolen. * Make sure to encrypt all sensitive data at rest. * Ensure up-to-date and strong standard algorithms, protocols, and keys are in place; use proper key management. * Encrypt all data in transit with secure protocols such as TLS with perfect forward secrecy (PFS) ciphers, cipher prioritization by the server, and secure parameters. Enforce encryption using directives like HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). * Disable caching for responses that contain sensitive data. * Store passwords using strong adaptive and salted hashing functions with a work factor (delay factor), such as Argon2, scrypt, bcrypt, or PBKDF2. * Verify independently the effectiveness of configuration and settings.

References

Severity

Owasp

Code: A02:2021

Category: Cryptographic Failures

Classification