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Logging is essential for debugging, incident response, and collecting forensic evidence. Nevertheless, logging sensitive data raises many concerns, including the privacy of the stakeholders, limitations imposed by the law on the collection of personal information, and the potential for data exposure by insiders. Sensitive information includes, but is not limited to, IP addresses, user names and passwords, email addresses, credit card numbers, and any personally identifiable information such as social security numbers. Many countries prohibit or restrict collection of personal data; others permit retention of personal data only when held in an anonymized form. For example, leaking unencrypted credit card number numbers into a log file could be a violation of PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) regulations [PCI 2010]. Consequently, logs must not contain sensitive data, particularly when prohibited by law.

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Programs typically support varying levels of protection. Some information, such as access times, can be safely logged. Some information can be logged, but the log file must be restricted from everyone but particular administrators. Other information, such as credit card numbers, can be included in logs only in encrypted form. Information , such as passwords , should not be logged at all.

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When the log cannot contain IP addresses, it should not contain any information about a SecurityException, because it might leak an IP address. When an exception contains sensitive information, the custom MyExceptionReporter class should extract or cleanse it before returning control to the next statement in the catch block (see rule ERR00-J. Do not suppress or ignore checked exceptions).

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This compliant solution does not log security exceptions except for the logging implicitly performed by MyExceptionReporter.:

  // ...
  catch (SecurityException e) {
    Exception e = MyExceptionReporter.handle(e);
  }

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Log messages with sensitive information should not be printed to the console display for security reasons (a possible example of sensitive information is passenger age). The java.util.logging.Logger class supports different logging levels that can be used for classifying such information. These are : FINEST, FINER, FINE, CONFIG, INFO, WARNING, and SEVERE. By default, the INFO, WARNING, and SEVERE levels print the message to the console, which is accessible by end users and system administrators.

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// makeMake sure that all handlers only print log messages rated INFO or higher
Handler handlers[] = logger.getHandlers();
for (int i = 0; i < handlers.length; i++) {
  handlers[i].setLevel(Level.INFO);
}
// ...
logger.finest("Age: " + passengerAge);

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Logging sensitive information can violate system security policies and can violate user privacy when the logging level is incorrect or when the log files are insecure.

Automated Detection

Related Guidelines

Android Implementation Details

DRD04-J. Do not log sensitive information is an Android-specific instance of this rule.

Bibliography

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