The product's intended functionality exposes information to certain actors in accordance with the developer's security policy, but this information is regarded as sensitive according to the intended security policies of other stakeholders such as the product's administrator, users, or others whose information is being processed.

When handling information, the developer must consider whether the information is regarded as sensitive by different stakeholders, such as users or administrators. Each stakeholder effectively has its own intended security policy that the product is expected to uphold. When a developer does not treat that information as sensitive, this can introduce a vulnerability that violates the expectations of the product's users.

Primary

Policy
This can occur when the product's policy does not account for all relevant stakeholders, or when the policies of other stakeholders are not interpreted properly.

Requirements
This can occur when requirements do not explicitly account for all relevant stakeholders.

Architecture and Design
Communications or data exchange frameworks may be chosen that exchange or provide access to more information than strictly needed.

Implementation
This can occur when the developer does not properly track the flow of sensitive information and how it is exposed, e.g., via an API.

Confidentiality
Read Application Data

This code displays some information on a web page.

Social Security Number: <%= ssn %></br>Credit Card Number: <%= ccn %>

The code displays a user's credit card and social security numbers, even though they aren't absolutely necessary.

CVE-2002-1725
Script calls phpinfo()
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2002-1725

CVE-2004-0033
Script calls phpinfo()
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2004-0033

CVE-2003-1181
Script calls phpinfo()
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2003-1181

CVE-2004-1422
Script calls phpinfo()
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2004-1422

CVE-2004-1590
Script calls phpinfo()
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2004-1590

CVE-2003-1038
Product lists DLLs and full pathnames.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2003-1038

CVE-2005-1205
Telnet protocol allows servers to obtain sensitive environment information from clients.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2005-1205

CVE-2005-0488
Telnet protocol allows servers to obtain sensitive environment information from clients.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2005-0488

Intended information leak

Allowed
This CWE entry is at the Base 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.

This entry is being considered for deprecation. It overlaps many other entries related to information exposures. It might not be essential to preserve this entry, since other key stakeholder policies are covered elsewhere, e.g. personal privacy leaks (CWE-359) and system-level exposures that are important to system administrators (CWE-497).
In vulnerability theory terms, this covers cases in which the developer's Intended Policy allows the information to be made available, but the information might be in violation of a Universal Policy in which the product's administrator should have control over which information is considered sensitive and therefore should not be exposed.

PLOVER
2006-07-19
Draft 3
2006-07-19

Sean Eidemiller
Cigital
2008-07-01
added/updated demonstrative examples

Eric Dalci
Cigital
2008-07-01
updated Time_of_Introduction

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

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-03-29
updated Name

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-01
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2012-05-11
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2012-10-30
updated Potential_Mitigations

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2014-06-23
updated Other_Notes, Relationship_Notes, Theoretical_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2014-07-30
updated Demonstrative_Examples, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2017-11-08
updated Applicable_Platforms

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2020-02-24
updated Demonstrative_Examples, Description, Maintenance_Notes, Modes_of_Introduction, Name, Other_Notes, Relationship_Notes, Relationships, Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2020-12-10
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2021-10-28
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-04-27
updated Relationships

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

Intended Information Leak
Intentional Information Exposure