Hardcoding IP addresses is security-sensitive. It has led in the past to the following vulnerabilities:

Today's services have an ever-changing architecture due to their scaling and redundancy needs. It is a mistake to think that a service will always have the same IP address. When it does change, the hardcoded IP will have to be modified too. This will have an impact on the product development, delivery and deployment:

Last but not least it has an effect on application security. Attackers might be able to decompile the code and thereby discover a potentially sensitive address. They can perform a Denial of Service attack on the service at this address or spoof the IP address. Such an attack is always possible, but in the case of a hardcoded IP address the fix will be much slower, which will increase an attack's impact.

Recommended Secure Coding Practices

Noncompliant Code Example

String ip = "192.168.12.42"; // Noncompliant
Socket socket = new Socket(ip, 6667);

Exceptions

No issue is reported for the following cases because they are not considered sensitive:

See