Delivering code in production with debug features activated is security-sensitive. It has led in the past to the following vulnerabilities:

An application's debug features enable developers to find bugs more easily and thus facilitate also the work of attackers. It often gives access to detailed information on both the system running the application and users.

Ask Yourself Whether

You are at risk if you answered yes to any of these questions.

Recommended Secure Coding Practices

Sensitive Code Example

Throwable.printStackTrace(...) prints a Throwable and its stack trace to System.Err (by default) which is not easily parseable and can expose sensitive information:

try {
  /* ... */
} catch(Exception e) {
  e.printStackTrace();        // Sensitive
}

EnableWebSecurity annotation for SpringFramework with debug to true enable debugging support:

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.EnableWebSecurity;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity(debug = true) // Sensitive
public class WebSecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
  // ...
}

Compliant Solution

Loggers should be used (instead of printStackTrace) to print throwables:

try {
  /* ... */
} catch(Exception e) {
  LOGGER.log("context", e); // Compliant
}

EnableWebSecurity annotation for SpringFramework with debug to false disable debugging support:

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.EnableWebSecurity;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity(debug = false) // Compliant
public class WebSecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
  // ...
}

See