CVE-2024-47197: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor, Insecure Storage of Sensitive Information vulnerability in Maven Archetype Plugin.

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor, Insecure Storage of Sensitive Information vulnerability in Maven Archetype Plugin.

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor, Insecure Storage of Sensitive Information vulnerability in Maven Archetype Plugin. This issue affects Maven Archetype Plugin: from 3.2.1 before 3.3.0. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 3.3.0, which fixes the issue. Archetype integration testing creates a file called ./target/classes/archetype-it/archetype-settings.xml This file contains all the content from the users ~/.m2/settings.xml file, which often contains information they do not want to publish. We expect that on many developer machines, this also contains credentials. When the user runs mvn verify again (without a mvn clean), this file becomes part of the final artifact. If a developer were to publish this into Maven Central or any other remote repository (whether as a release or a snapshot) their credentials would be published without them knowing.

Description from the National Vulnerability Database, published by security@apache.org

What it means for a small business

Maven Archetype Plugin runs on web servers, so this is mostly your hosting company's to fix. On shared hosting you can't patch it yourself, but you can ask.

Ask your host whether your server runs it, whether it's updated, and on what date. A good host answers that in a day.

How likely is an attack? The Exploit Prediction Scoring System, run by FIRST (the global association of security response teams), puts the odds of this one being exploited in the next 30 days at 0.84%, higher than 57% of CVEs. That’s low, but low isn’t zero, and the odds jump the day someone publishes an exploit. Scored October 29, 2026, updated daily.

Check your own setup

Website check: reads what your site runs from the outside (WordPress version, plugins it can see, old server software) and matches it against this database.
Server check: what your web server says about itself, and whether that version has known flaws.

Sources

Part of the Huttenlocher Technologies vulnerability database, refreshed twice a day from CISA and the NVD. The title, category and plain-language guidance are ours; check the linked record before acting on a detail. This is general guidance, not a review of your systems.

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