Information Disclosure
Information disclosure occurs when an application unintentionally exposes sensitive data that aids attackers in reconnaissance or directly compromises security.
How It Works
Information disclosure occurs when an application unintentionally exposes sensitive data that aids attackers in reconnaissance or directly compromises security. This happens through multiple channels: verbose error messages that display stack traces revealing internal paths and frameworks, improperly secured debug endpoints left active in production, and misconfigured servers that expose directory listings or version control artifacts like .git folders. APIs often leak excessive data in responses—returning full user objects when only a name is needed, or revealing system internals through metadata fields.
Attackers exploit these exposures systematically. They probe for common sensitive files (.env, config.php, backup archives), trigger error conditions to extract framework details, and analyze response timing or content differences to enumerate valid usernames or resources. Even subtle variations—like "invalid password" versus "user not found"—enable account enumeration. Exposed configuration files frequently contain database credentials, API keys, or internal service URLs that unlock further attack vectors.
The attack flow typically starts with passive reconnaissance: examining HTTP headers, JavaScript bundles, and public endpoints for version information and architecture clues. Active probing follows—testing predictable paths, manipulating parameters to trigger exceptions, and comparing responses across similar requests to identify information leakage patterns.
Impact
- Credential compromise: Exposed configuration files, hardcoded secrets in source code, or API keys enable direct authentication bypass
- Attack surface mapping: Stack traces, framework versions, and internal paths help attackers craft targeted exploits for known vulnerabilities
- Data breach: Direct exposure of user data, payment information, or proprietary business logic through oversharing APIs or accessible backups
- Privilege escalation pathway: Internal URLs, service discovery information, and architecture details facilitate lateral movement and SSRF attacks
- Compliance violations: GDPR, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA penalties for exposing regulated data through preventable disclosures
Real-World Examples
A major Git repository exposure affected thousands of websites when .git folders remained accessible on production servers, allowing attackers to reconstruct entire source code histories including deleted commits containing credentials. Tools like GitDumper automated mass exploitation of this misconfiguration.
Cloud storage misconfigurations have repeatedly exposed sensitive data when companies left S3 buckets or Azure Blob containers publicly readable. One incident exposed 150 million voter records because verbose API error messages revealed the storage URL structure, and no authentication was required.
Framework debug modes left enabled in production have caused numerous breaches. Django's DEBUG=True setting exposed complete stack traces with database queries and environment variables, while Laravel's debug pages revealed encryption keys through the APP_KEY variable in environment dumps.
Mitigation
- Generic error pages: Return uniform error messages to users; log detailed exceptions server-side only
- Disable debug modes: Enforce production configurations that suppress stack traces, verbose logging, and debug endpoints through deployment automation
- Access control audits: Restrict or remove development artifacts (
.git, backup files,phpinfo()) and internal endpoints before deployment - Response minimization: API responses should return only necessary fields; implement allowlists rather than blocklists for data exposure
- Security headers: Deploy
X-Content-Type-Options, remove server version banners, and disable directory indexing - Timing consistency: Ensure authentication and validation responses take uniform time regardless of input validity
Recent CVEs (68612)
FFmpeg n7.0 has a race condition vulnerability in the VP9 decoder. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.9), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required.
moby v25.0.5 is affected by a Race Condition in builder/builder-next/adapters/snapshot/layer.go. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
FutureNet NXR series routers provided by Century Systems Co., Ltd. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Insertion of Sensitive Information into Log File in Checkmk GmbH's Checkmk versions <2.3.0p22, <2.2.0p37, <2.1.0p50 (EOL) causes remote site secrets to be written to web log files accessible to local. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.7), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Certain models of routers from Billion Electric has a Plaintext Storage of a Password vulnerability. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.2), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
MSA FieldServer Gateway 5.0.0 through 6.5.2 allows cross-origin WebSocket hijacking. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
A vulnerability was found in Guangzhou Huayi Intelligent Technology Jeewms 3.7. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.9), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. Public exploit code available and no vendor patch available.
The Wallet for WooCommerce plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to incorrect conversion between numeric types in all versions up to, and including, 1.5.6. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
Improper Control of Filename for Include/Require Statement in PHP Program ('PHP Remote File Inclusion') vulnerability in WebbyTemplate Office Locator office-locator.3.0. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable. No vendor patch available.
Improper Control of Filename for Include/Require Statement in PHP Program ('PHP Remote File Inclusion') vulnerability in Ibrahim Pricing table addon for elementor pricing-table-addon-for-elementor. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable. No vendor patch available.
Improper Control of Filename for Include/Require Statement in PHP Program ('PHP Remote File Inclusion') vulnerability in quomodosoft Shopready shopready-elementor-addon allows PHP Local File. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable. No vendor patch available.
Improper Control of Filename for Include/Require Statement in PHP Program ('PHP Remote File Inclusion') vulnerability in AbsolutePlugins Absolute Addons For Elementor absolute-addons allows Local. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable. No vendor patch available.
The uyuni-server-attestation systemd service needs a database_password environment variable. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.7), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The Royal Elementor Addons and Templates plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 1.7.1003 via the 'wpr-template' shortcode due to insufficient. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
The Restaurant & Cafe Addon for Elementor plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 1.5.9 via the 'narestaurant_elementor_template' shortcode. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
The Primary Addon for Elementor plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 1.6.2 via the [prim_elementor_template] shortcode due to insufficient. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
The File Manager Pro - Filester plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Local JavaScript File Inclusion in all versions up to, and including, 1.8.5 via the 'fm_locale' parameter. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.2), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. This Path Traversal vulnerability could allow attackers to access files and directories outside the intended path.
Inconsistent interpretation of HTTP requests ('HTTP Request/Response Smuggling') issue exists in HAProxy. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
There is an Out-of-bounds read vulnerability in V-Server (v4.0.19.0 and earlier) and V-Server Lite (v4.0.19.0 and earlier). Rated high severity (CVSS 7.8), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
There is an Out-of-bounds read vulnerability in TELLUS (v4.0.19.0 and earlier) and TELLUS Lite (v4.0.19.0 and earlier). Rated high severity (CVSS 7.8), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
sp-php-email-handler is a PHP package for handling contact form submissions. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.6), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
go-gh is a Go module for interacting with the `gh` utility and the GitHub API from the command line. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The gh cli is GitHub’s official command line tool. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.5), this vulnerability is no authentication required. No vendor patch available.
Autolab is a course management service that enables auto-graded programming assignments. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
Centurion ERP (Enterprise Rescource Planning) is a simple application developed to provide open source IT management with a large emphasis on the IT Service Management (ITSM) modules. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
Contiki-NG is an open-source, cross-platform operating system for IoT devices. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.6), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. This Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability could allow attackers to read data from memory outside the intended buffer boundaries.
Contiki-NG is an open-source, cross-platform operating system for IoT devices. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.6), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. This Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability could allow attackers to read data from memory outside the intended buffer boundaries.
This Medium severity Security Misconfiguration vulnerability was introduced in version 8.8.1 of Confluence Data Center and Server for Windows installations. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.4). No vendor patch available.
A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in SourceCodester Best House Rental Management System 1.0. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.9), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. Public exploit code available and no vendor patch available.
Non constant time cryptographic operation in Devolutions.XTS.NET 2024.11.19 and earlier allows an attacker to render half of the encryption key obsolete via a timing attacks. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.1), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
When exporting media types, the password is exported in the YAML in plain text. Rated low severity (CVSS 2.7), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The researcher is showing that due to the way the SNMP trap log is parsed, an attacker can craft an SNMP trap with additional lines of information and have forged data show in the Zabbix UI. Rated low severity (CVSS 3.7), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required. No vendor patch available.
In the src/libs/zbxembed/browser.c file, the es_browser_ctor method retrieves a heap pointer from the Duktape JavaScript engine. Rated low severity (CVSS 3.3), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The HttpRequest object allows to get the HTTP headers from the server's response after sending the request. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.1), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Zohocorp ManageEngine Analytics Plus versions below 6100 are vulnerable to authenticated sensitive data exposure which allows the users to retrieve sensitive tokens associated to the org-admin. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.1), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
A improper verification of cryptographic signature vulnerability in plugin management in iota C.ai Conversational Platform from 1.0.0 through 2.1.3 allows remote authenticated users to load a. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The ProfilePress plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Sensitive Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 4.15.18 via the WordPress core search feature. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. This Exposure of Sensitive Information vulnerability could allow attackers to access sensitive data that should not be disclosed.
An insufficient certification validation issue in the Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect app enables attackers to connect the GlobalProtect app to arbitrary servers. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.1), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. Public exploit code available and no vendor patch available.
A directory traversal vulnerability in Hewlett Packard Enterprise Insight Remote Support may allow remote code execution. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. Public exploit code available and no vendor patch available.
lakeFS is an open-source tool that transforms object storage into a Git-like repository. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.7), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
An issue has been discovered in GitLab EE affecting all versions starting from 17.3 before 17.3.7, all versions starting from 17.4 before 17.4.4, all versions starting from 17.5 before 17.5.2 in. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
sigstore-java is a sigstore java client for interacting with sigstore infrastructure. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.5), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
An issue was discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions from 16.9.8 before 17.4.5, 17.5 before 17.5.3, and 17.6 before 17.6.1. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Local File Inclusion (LFI) vulnerability has been discovered in TCPDF 6.7.5. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.2), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity.
A log spoofing flaw was found in the Tuned package due to improper sanitization of some API arguments. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.5), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The implementation of atob in "Zabbix JS" allows to create a string with arbitrary content and use it to access internal properties of objects. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
When a URL is added to the map element, it is recorded in the database with sequential IDs. Rated low severity (CVSS 2.2), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable. No vendor patch available.
A vulnerability exists in NSD570 that allows any authenticated user to access all device logs disclosing login information with timestamps. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Accessing a non-secure HTTP site that uses a non-existent port may cause the SSL padlock icon in the location URL bar to, misleadingly, appear secure. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.4), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Missing thread synchronization primitives could have led to a data race on members of the PlaybackParams structure. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
On Android, Firefox may have inadvertently allowed viewing saved passwords without the required device PIN authentication. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.7), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Copying sensitive information from Private Browsing tabs on Android, such as passwords, may have inadvertently stored data in the cloud-based clipboard history if enabled. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
A flaw in handling fullscreen transitions may have inadvertently caused the application to become stuck in fullscreen mode when a modal dialog was opened during the transition. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability in Apache NimBLE. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity.
Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability in Apache NimBLE. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.0), this vulnerability is no authentication required.
The Jeg Elementor Kit plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Sensitive Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 2.6.9 via the render_content function in. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. This Exposure of Sensitive Information vulnerability could allow attackers to access sensitive data that should not be disclosed.
A CWE-15 "External Control of System or Configuration Setting" was discovered affecting the following devices manufactured by Advantech: EKI-6333AC-2G (<= 1.6.3), EKI-6333AC-2GD (<= v1.6.3) and. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.2), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
51l3nc3, member of the AXIS OS Bug Bounty Program, has found that the VAPIX API managedoverlayimages.cgi was vulnerable to a race condition attack allowing for an attacker to block access to the. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Seth Fogie, member of AXIS Camera Station Pro Bug Bounty Program has found that it is possible to edit and/or remove views without the necessary permission due to a client-side-only check. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.4), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Florent Thiéry has found that selected Axis devices were vulnerable to handling certain ethernet frames which could lead to the Axis device becoming unavailable in the network. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Out-of-bounds read vulnerability exists in Sharp Corporation and Toshiba Tec Corporation multiple MFPs (multifunction printers), which may lead to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The web interface of the affected devices process some crafted HTTP requests improperly, leading to a device crash. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The web interface of the affected devices is designed to hide the LDAP credentials even for administrative users. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
"sessionlist.html" and "sys_trayentryreboot.html" are accessible with no authentication. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.1), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
User passwords are decrypted and stored on memory before any user logged in. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.9), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required. No vendor patch available.
User passwords are decrypted and stored on memory before any user logged in. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.9), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required. No vendor patch available.
User passwords are decrypted and stored on memory before any user logged in. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.9), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required. No vendor patch available.
Seth Fogie, member of the AXIS Camera Station Pro Bug Bounty Program, has found that the Incident report feature may expose sensitive credentials on the AXIS Camera Station windows client. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.3), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
IBM Workload Scheduler 9.5, 10.1, and 10.2 stores user credentials in plain text which can be read by a local user. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.5), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs: Fix uninitialized value issue in from_kuid and from_kgid ocfs2_setattr() uses attr->ia_mode, attr->ia_uid and attr->ia_gid in a. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.5), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. This Use of Uninitialized Resource vulnerability could allow attackers to access uninitialized memory causing crashes or information disclosure.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nvme: tcp: avoid race between queue_lock lock and destroy Commit 76d54bf20cdc ("nvme-tcp: don't access released socket during error. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.7).
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Check validity of link->type in bpf_link_show_fdinfo() If a newly-added link type doesn't invoke BPF_LINK_TYPE(), accessing. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.1), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. This Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability could allow attackers to read data from memory outside the intended buffer boundaries.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: resolve faulty mmap_region() error path behaviour The mmap_region() function is somewhat terrifying, with spaghetti-like. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.8), this vulnerability is low attack complexity. Public exploit code available.
SvelteKit is a framework for rapidly developing robust, performant web applications using Svelte. Rated low severity (CVSS 2.0), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable. This Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability could allow attackers to inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users.
Autolab is a course management service that enables auto-graded programming assignments. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.1), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF-based dataplane. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity.
A vulnerability was found in Keycloak. Rated low severity (CVSS 2.7), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
A flaw was found in Keycloak. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.9), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required. No vendor patch available.
In OpenStack Neutron before 25.0.1, neutron/extensions/tagging.py can use an incorrect ID during policy enforcement. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Affected devices beacon to eCharge cloud infrastructure asking if there are any command they should run. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. Public exploit code available and no vendor patch available.
IBM Watson Query on Cloud Pak for Data 1.8, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and IBM Db2 Big SQL on Cloud Pak for Data 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, and 7.6 could allow an authenticated user to obtain sensitive information due to. Rated medium severity (CVSS 6.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The FluentSMTP - WP SMTP Plugin with Amazon SES, SendGrid, MailGun, Postmark, Google and Any SMTP Provider plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to PHP Object Injection in all versions up to, and. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The Increase Maximum Upload File Size | Increase Execution Time plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Full Path Disclosure in all versions up to, and including, 1.1.3. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The LA-Studio Element Kit for Elementor plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Local File Inclusion in all versions up to, and including, 1.4.2 via the _load_template function. Rated high severity (CVSS 8.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity.
The Enter Addons - Ultimate Template Builder for Elementor plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 2.1.9 via the Advanced Tabs widget due to. Rated medium severity (CVSS 4.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
The Product Table for WooCommerce by CodeAstrology (wooproducttable.com) plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Sensitive Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 3.5.1 via the. Rated medium severity (CVSS 5.3), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
NVIDIA Base Command Manager contains a missing authentication vulnerability in the CMDaemon component. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
NVIDIA Delegated Licensing Service for all appliance platforms contains a vulnerability where an attacker may cause an unauthorized action. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.6), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
IrfanView SID File Parsing Out-Of-Bounds Read Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.8), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
Foxit PDF Reader AcroForm Out-Of-Bounds Read Information Disclosure Vulnerability. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.1), this vulnerability is no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.