CVE-2025-23215 PMD Designer's release key passphrase (GPG) available on Maven Central in cleartext

What is CVE-2025-23215?

CVE-2025-23215 is a critical vulnerability in pmd, published on 31 Jan 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

PMD is an extensible multilanguage static code analyzer. The passphrase for the PMD and PMD Designer release signing keys are included in jar published to Maven Central. The private key itself is not known to have been compromised itself, but given its passphrase is, it must also be considered potentially compromised. As a mitigation, both compromised keys have been revoked so that no future use of the keys are possible. Note, that the published artifacts in Maven Central under the group id net.sourceforge.pmd are not compromised and the signatures are valid.

Weakness: CWE-540, CWE-312, CWE-200

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-23215?

6 open source packages ship an affected version, including net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-core, net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-designer and net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-ui.

How do I fix CVE-2025-23215?

Upgrade net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-core to 7.10.0 or later.

Is CVE-2025-23215 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-23215 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-88m4-h43f-wx84.