Often, during a penetration test on web applications, we come up against many error codes generated from applications or web servers. It’s possible to cause these errors to be displayed by using a particular requests, either specially crafted with tools or created manually. These codes are very useful to penetration testers during their activities, because they reveal a lot of information about databases, bugs, and other technological components directly linked with web applications.
Description
Custom errors are used to ensure that internal error messages are not exposed to end users. Instead, a custom error message should be returned which provides a friendlier user experience and keeps potentially sensitive internal implementation information away from public view.
Solution for IIS
Custom errors are easy to enable, just configure the web.config to ensure the mode is either “On” or “RemoteOnly” and ensure there is a valid “defaultRedirect” defined for a custom error page as
follows:
<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="~/Error" /> |