Common Weakness Enumeration

Conceptual Operational Mapping Friendly Select All

Reset Clear Submit Cancel

The Web services architecture may require exposing a Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) file that contains information on the publicly accessible services and how callers of these services should interact with them (e.g. what parameters they expect and what types they return).

An information exposure may occur if any of the following apply:

• The WSDL file is accessible to a wider audience than intended.
• The WSDL file contains information on the methods/services that should not be publicly accessible or information about deprecated methods. This problem is made more likely due to the WSDL often being automatically generated from the code.
• Information in the WSDL file helps guess names/locations of methods/resources that should not be publicly accessible.

Section HelpThis table specifies different individual consequences associated with the weakness. The Scope identifies the application security area that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in exploiting this weakness. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a weakness will be exploited to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.

Impact	Details
Read Application Data	Scope: Confidentiality The attacker may find sensitive information located in the WSDL file.

Section HelpThe different Modes of Introduction provide information about how and when this weakness may be introduced. The Phase identifies a point in the life cycle at which introduction may occur, while the Note provides a typical scenario related to introduction during the given phase.

Phase	Note
Implementation
Operation

Section HelpThis listing shows possible areas for which the given weakness could appear. These may be for specific named Languages, Operating Systems, Architectures, Paradigms, Technologies, or a class of such platforms. The platform is listed along with how frequently the given weakness appears for that instance.

Example 1

The WSDL for a service providing information on the best price of a certain item exposes the following method: float getBestPrice(String ItemID) An attacker might guess that there is a method setBestPrice (String ItemID, float Price) that is available and invoke that method to try and change the best price of a given item to their advantage. The attack may succeed if the attacker correctly guesses the name of the method, the method does not have proper access controls around it and the service itself has the functionality to update the best price of the item.

Section HelpThis MemberOf Relationships table shows additional CWE Categories and Views that reference this weakness as a member. This information is often useful in understanding where a weakness fits within the context of external information sources.