CWE-615 Inclusion of Sensitive Information in Source Code Comments

The product's source code includes comments that contain sensitive information, such as filenames related to the application, old links or links that were not meant to be browsed by users, old code fragments, etc.

• Confidentiality: Read Application Data — An attacker who finds these comments can map the application's structure and files, expose hidden parts of the site, and study the fragments of code to reverse engineer the application, which may help develop further attacks against the site.

• [Distribution] Remove comments which have sensitive information about the design/implementation of the application. Some of the comments may be exposed to the user and affect the security posture of the application.

• Automated Static Analysis: Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)

• CVE-2007-6197: Version numbers and internal hostnames leaked in HTML comments. • CVE-2007-4072: CMS places full pathname of server in HTML comment. • CVE-2009-2431: blog software leaks real username in HTML comment.