Resolve vulnerability: Active debug code

David Pisekrequested to merge
remediate/active-debug-code-D20250211T081736 into dup-cwe-119

Vulnerability finding detected in merge request: duplicate CWE-119 (!13) • Unassigned

AI GENERATED FIX

The suggested code changes were generated by GitLab Duo Vulnerability Resolution, an AI feature. Use this feature with caution. Before you run a pipeline or apply the code changes, carefully review and test them, to ensure that they solve the vulnerability.

The large language model that generated the suggested code changes was provided with the entire file that contains the vulnerable lines of code. It is not aware of any functionality outside of this context.

Please see our documentation for more information about this feature and leave feedback in this issue.

Description:

The Flask application is running with debug=True configured. By enabling this option, certain exceptions or errors could cause sensitive information to be leaked in HTTP responses.

Additionally, it is not recommended to run a Flask application using Flask.run(...) in production. Instead, a WSGI server such as gunicorn or waitress be used instead.

For more information on deployment options for Flask applications see:

Analysis:

The vulnerability report indicates an "Active debug code" issue, which is associated with security misconfiguration (OWASP A6:2017 and A05:2021) and CWE-489 (Active Debug Code). The specific part of the code flagged as vulnerable is:

app.run(debug=True)

This line enables Flask's debug mode, which is a security concern in production environments. Debug mode in Flask provides detailed error messages and an interactive debugger, which can expose sensitive information about the application's structure and potentially allow arbitrary code execution if an attacker gains access to the debugger.

While debug mode is useful during development, it should never be enabled in a production environment. The presence of this line in the main block suggests that it might be accidentally left enabled when deploying the application.

Summary:

  1. The reported vulnerability is "Active debug code," which relates to leaving Flask's debug mode enabled in the application.

  2. The fix provided changes app.run(debug=True) to app.run(debug=False). This addresses the security concern by disabling debug mode, which prevents the exposure of sensitive information through detailed error messages and removes the risk of arbitrary code execution through the interactive debugger.

  3. To further improve security, it's recommended to use environment variables or configuration files to control debug settings. This allows for easy switching between development and production environments without changing the code. For example:

import os

if __name__ == '__main__':
    debug_mode = os.environ.get('FLASK_DEBUG', 'False').lower() == 'true'
    app.run(debug=debug_mode)

This approach ensures that debug mode is off by default and can only be enabled by explicitly setting the FLASK_DEBUG environment variable to 'true'.

Identifiers:

  • A6:2017 - Security Misconfiguration
  • A05:2021 - Security Misconfiguration
  • Bandit Test ID B201
  • bandit.B201
  • CWE-489

Merge request reports