Security Design Principles - Exception Management

- J.D. Meier, Alex Mackman, Michael Dunner, Srinath Vasireddy, Ray Escamilla and Anandha Murukan

Do Not Leak Information to the Client

In the event of a failure, do not expose information that could lead to information disclosure. For example, do not expose stack trace details that include function names and line numbers in the case of debug builds (which should not be used on production servers). Instead, return generic error messages to the client.

Log Detailed Error Messages

Send detailed error messages to the error log. Send minimal information to the consumer of your service or application, such as a generic error message and custom error log ID that can subsequently be mapped to detailed message in the event logs. Make sure that you do not log passwords or other sensitive data.

Catch Exceptions

Use structured exception handling and catch exception conditions. Doing so avoids leaving your application in an inconsistent state that may lead to information disclosure. It also helps protect your application from denial of service attacks. Decide how to propagate exceptions internally in your application and give special consideration to what occurs at the application boundary.