CWE-526βCleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment Variable
PUBLISHEDweakness record
released 2006-07-19 Β· last modified 2025-12-11
Metadata
Weakness Name
Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in an Environment Variable
Description
The product uses an environment variable to store unencrypted sensitive information.
Information stored in an environment variable can be accessible by other processes with the execution context, including child processes that dependencies are executed in, or serverless functions in cloud environments. An environment variable's contents can also be inserted into messages, headers, log files, or other outputs. Often these other dependencies have no need to use the environment variable in question. A weakness that discloses environment variables could expose this information.