Empty Password in Configuration File

Demonstrations

The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.

Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.

Example One

The following examples show a portion of properties and configuration files for Java and ASP.NET applications. The files include username and password information but the password is provided as an empty string.

This Java example shows a properties file with an empty password string.

# Java Web App ResourceBundle properties file
...
webapp.ldap.username=secretUsername
webapp.ldap.password=
...

The following example shows a portion of a configuration file for an ASP.Net application. This configuration file includes username and password information for a connection to a database and the password is provided as an empty string.

...
<connectionStrings>
<add name="ud_DEV" connectionString="connectDB=uDB; uid=db2admin; pwd=; dbalias=uDB;" providerName="System.Data.Odbc" />
</connectionStrings>
...

An empty string should never be used as a password as this can allow unauthorized access to the application. Username and password information should not be included in a configuration file or a properties file in clear text. If possible, encrypt this information and avoid CWE-260 and CWE-13.

See Also