Cassandra’s command‑line shell, cqlsh, records every command it executes in the user’s home directory without sanitising sensitive data. Operations that include passwords, such as login or user creation commands, are written to the ~/.cassandra/cqlsh_history file in cleartext. Consequently, any information entered in those commands becomes permanently accessible to anyone who can read the history file.

The affected vendor is the Apache Software Foundation and the product is Apache Cassandra. The vulnerability exists in all 4.0 releases shipped before the 4.0.20 update, which removes the problematic history behaviour. No specific sub‑version is listed; any unpatched 4.0 build should be considered vulnerable.

The CVSS score of 5.5 indicates moderate severity, while the EPSS score of less than 1% suggests that large‑scale exploitation is unlikely. The vulnerability is not present in the CISA KEV catalog. Based on the description, it is inferred that the attack requires local read access to the ~/.cassandra/cqlsh_history file in a user’s home directory. Once read, the stored passwords can be used to compromise the database or broader network resources.