CWE-261Weak Encoding for Password

Abstraction: Base · CVEs in our corpus: 38

Obscuring a password with a trivial encoding does not protect the password.

Password management issues occur when a password is stored in plaintext in an application's properties or configuration file. A programmer can attempt to remedy the password management problem by obscuring the password with an encoding function, such as base 64 encoding, but this effort does not adequately protect the password.

Last updated: 09 May 2026 03:25 UTC

NIST 800-53 r5 controls that address this weakness (0)AI

Control	Title	Family	Why it addresses this CWE
No NIST controls proposed yet.

Top CVEs of this weakness type, ranked by Risk Priority

CVE	Risk	CVSS	EPSS	Published
`CVE-2017-7905`	2.0	9.8	0.0020	2017-06-30
`CVE-2020-10275`	2.0	9.8	0.0017	2020-06-24
`CVE-2021-21507`	1.8	8.8	0.0012	2021-04-30
`CVE-2024-24279`	1.8	8.8	0.0005	2024-04-08
`CVE-2024-45394`	1.8	8.8	0.0004	2024-09-03
`CVE-2025-31229`	1.8	9.1	0.0012	2025-07-30
`CVE-2024-45273`	1.7	8.4	0.0009	2024-10-15
`CVE-2020-14481`	1.6	7.8	0.0001	2022-02-24
`CVE-2022-45099`	1.6	7.8	0.0004	2023-02-01
`CVE-2024-28270`	1.6	8.1	0.0007	2024-04-08
`CVE-2024-8455`	1.6	8.1	0.0021	2024-09-30
`CVE-2022-38469`	1.5	7.5	0.0022	2023-01-18
`CVE-2023-0525`	1.5	7.5	0.0039	2023-08-04
`CVE-2025-2862`	1.5	7.5	0.0025	2025-03-28
`CVE-2023-43776`	1.4	6.8	0.0003	2023-10-17
`CVE-2024-0556`	1.4	7.1	0.0018	2024-01-16
`CVE-2025-26401`	1.3	6.5	0.0005	2025-04-04
`CVE-2020-10919`	1.2	5.9	0.0104	2020-07-23
`CVE-2022-34445`	1.2	6.0	0.0004	2023-02-11
`CVE-2025-67652`	1.2	6.1	0.0001	2026-01-22
`CVE-2013-1053`	1.1	5.5	0.0002	2021-01-13
`CVE-2023-0356`	1.1	5.7	0.0008	2023-01-26
`CVE-2023-22271`	1.1	5.3	0.0023	2023-03-22
`CVE-2023-7237`	1.1	5.7	0.0006	2024-01-23
`CVE-2024-23492`	1.1	5.7	0.0007	2024-03-01