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.

Primary

Resultant

Implementation

Operation

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

Architecture and Design
Limit access to the WSDL file as much as possible. If services are provided only to a limited number of entities, it may be better to provide WSDL privately to each of these entities than to publish WSDL publicly.

Architecture and Design
Separation of Privilege
Make sure that WSDL does not describe methods that should not be publicly accessible. Make sure to protect service methods that should not be publicly accessible with access controls.

Architecture and Design
Do not use method names in WSDL that might help an adversary guess names of private methods/resources used by the service.

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.

Allowed
This CWE entry is at the Variant level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

Evgeny Lebanidze
Cigital
2008-01-30
Draft 8
2008-01-30

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2008-09-08
updated Applicable_Platforms, Common_Consequences, Description, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2009-10-29
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2010-09-27
updated Description, Name

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2010-12-13
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-01
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2012-05-11
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2013-02-21
updated Potential_Mitigations

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2014-07-30
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2017-11-08
updated Applicable_Platforms, Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Enabling_Factors_for_Exploitation, Observed_Examples

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2020-02-24
updated Name, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2021-10-28
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-04-27
updated Relationships, Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-06-29
updated Mapping_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2025-12-11
4.19
2025-12-11
updated Weakness_Ordinalities

Information Leak through WSDL File
Information Exposure Through WSDL File