Debugging messages help attackers learn about the system and plan a form of attack.
ASP .NET applications can be configured to produce debug binaries. These binaries give detailed debugging messages and should not be used in production environments. Debug binaries are meant to be used in a development or testing environment and can pose a security risk if they are deployed to production.

Primary

The debug attribute of the <compilation> tag defines whether compiled binaries should include debugging information. The use of debug binaries causes an application to provide as much information about itself as possible to the user.

Implementation

Build and Compilation

Confidentiality
Read Application Data
Attackers can leverage the additional information they gain from debugging output to mount attacks targeted on the framework, database, or other resources used by 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.)
High

System Configuration
Avoid releasing debug binaries into the production environment. Change the debug mode to false when the application is deployed into production.

The file web.config contains the debug mode setting. Setting debug to "true" will let the browser display debugging information.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><configuration><system.web><compilationdefaultLanguage="c#"debug="true"/>...</system.web></configuration>

Change the debug mode to false when the application is deployed into production.

ASP.NET Misconfiguration: Creating Debug Binary

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.

7 Pernicious Kingdoms
2006-07-19
Draft 3
2006-07-19

Eric Dalci
Cigital
2008-07-01
updated Demonstrative_Example, Potential_Mitigations, Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2008-09-08
updated Relationships, Other_Notes, Taxonomy_Mappings

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2008-11-24
updated Description, Other_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2009-07-27
updated Background_Details, Common_Consequences, Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Other_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-01
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-27
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 Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2020-02-24
updated References, Relationships, Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2021-10-28
updated Relationships

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

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-06-29
updated Mapping_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2025-12-11
4.19
2025-12-11
updated References, Relationships, Weakness_Ordinalities