The Apache Software Foundation has patched a significant privacy loophole in Apache Answer, its popular Q&A platform software. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-24735, allows unauthenticated attackers to dig up the ghosts of the past, accessing the full revision history of content that was supposed to be deleted.
Rated with a severity of “Important,” the flaw essentially breaks the promise of the “delete” button. In a standard secure system, when a user deletes a post or an admin removes sensitive data, it should vanish from public view. However, this bug keeps the back door open.
The core of the issue lies in how the platform handles API requests for content history. The advisory describes it as an “Exposure of Private Personal Information to an Unauthorized Actor vulnerability in Apache Answer”.
The flaw specifically affects the revision API. Due to improper access control, the system failed to verify if the person asking for the history had the right to see it. As a result, “an unauthenticated API endpoint incorrectly exposes full revision history for deleted content”.
This is a dream scenario for data scrapers and privacy invaders. If a user accidentally posted an API key, a password, or a personal phone number and then quickly deleted the post to “fix” the mistake, this vulnerability would allow an attacker to simply query the API and retrieve the sensitive data from the revision history.
“This allows unauthorized user to retrieve restricted or sensitive information,” the report warns.
The vulnerability affects all versions of Apache Answer through 1.7.1. Administrators running these older versions are exposing their users’ edit histories to the public internet.
The maintainers have addressed the issue in the latest major release. “Users are recommended to upgrade to version 2.0.0, which fixes the issue,” the advisory states.
For community managers and IT teams running Apache Answer, this update is mandatory to ensure that what happens on the forum—and what is deleted from the forum—actually stays private.