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- The sensitive information can become accessible to whoever has access to the source code, for example, the developers.
- Once the system goes into production, it can become unwieldy to manage and accommodate changes to the code.
- In certain cases, it can also violate the fundamental principle of recalling the memory used to store the sensitive information as soon as the required operation has concluded. A carefully administered heap dump or application monitoring through a JVM debugger can expose the sensitive information if it persists over an extended period of time.
- Malicious users may use decompilation techniques to resurrect the hardcoded sensitive information. This is a critical security vulnerability.
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