The product fails to adequately prevent the revealing of unnecessary and potentially sensitive system information within debugging messages.

Debug messages are messages that help troubleshoot an issue by revealing the internal state of the system. For example, debug data in design can be exposed through internal memory array dumps or boot logs through interfaces like UART via TAP commands, scan chain, etc. Thus, the more information contained in a debug message, the easier it is to debug. However, there is also the risk of revealing information that could help an attacker either decipher a vulnerability, and/or gain a better understanding of the system. Thus, this extra information could lower the "security by obscurity" factor. While "security by obscurity" alone is insufficient, it can help as a part of "Defense-in-depth".

Primary

Resultant

Implementation

Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability
Access Control
Accountability
Authentication
Authorization
Non-Repudiation
Read Memory
Bypass Protection Mechanism
Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
Varies by Context
Medium

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.)

Implementation
Ensure that a debug message does not reveal any unnecessary information during the debug process for the intended response.

This example here shows how an attacker can take advantage of unnecessary information in debug messages.
Example 1: Suppose in response to a Test Access Port (TAP) chaining request the debug message also reveals the current TAP hierarchy (the full topology) in addition to the success/failure message.
Example 2: In response to a password-filling request, the debug message, instead of a simple Granted/Denied response, prints an elaborate message, "The user-entered password does not match the actual password stored in <directory name>."
The result of the above examples is that the user is able to gather additional unauthorized information about the system from the debug messages.
The solution is to ensure that Debug messages do not reveal additional details.

CVE-2021-25476
Digital Rights Management (DRM) capability for mobile platform leaks pointer information, simplifying ASLR bypass
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2021-25476

CVE-2020-24491
Processor generates debug message that contains sensitive information ("addresses of memory transactions").
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2020-24491

CVE-2017-18326
modem debug messages include cryptographic keys
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2017-18326

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.

Parbati Kumar Manna, Hareesh Khattri, Arun Kanuparthi
Intel Corporation
2020-05-31
4.2
2020-08-20

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2021-07-20
updated Observed_Examples, Related_Attack_Patterns, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2022-10-13
updated References

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-04-27
updated Observed_Examples, References, Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-06-29
updated Mapping_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-10-26
updated Observed_Examples

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2025-09-09
4.18
2025-09-09
updated References

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