Accidental leaking of sensitive information through data queries

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This is a Vulnerability. To view all vulnerabilities, please see the Vulnerability Category page.

1 Description
2 Risk Factors
3 Examples
4 Related Attacks
5 Related Vulnerabilities
6 Related Controls
7 Related Technical Impacts
8 References

ASDR Table of Contents

Last revision (mm/dd/yy): 10/27/2008

Description

When trying to keep information confidential, an attacker can often infer some of the information by using statistics.

Consequences

Confidentiality: Sensitive information may possibly be disclosed through data queries accidentally.

Exposure period

Design: Proper mechanisms for preventing this kind of problem generally need to be identified at the design level.

Platform

Any; particularly systems using relational databases or object-relational databases.

Required resources

Any

Severity

Medium

Likelihood of exploit

Medium

Avoidance and mitigation

This is a complex topic. See the book Translucent Databases for a good discussion of best practices.

In situations where data should not be tied to individual users, but a large number of users should be able to make queries that "scrub" the identity of users, it may be possible to get information about a user - e.g., by specifying search terms that are known to be unique to that user.