Observable Internal Behavioral Discrepancy

Ideally, a product should provide as little information as possible to an attacker. Any hints that the attacker may be making progress can then be used to simplify or optimize the attack. For example, in a login procedure that requires a username and password, ultimately there is only one decision: success or failure. However, internally, two separate actions are performed: determining if the username exists, and checking if the password is correct. If the product behaves differently based on whether the username exists or not, then the attacker only needs to concentrate on the password.