tomcat -- Security constraints ignored or applied too late

The Apache Software Foundation reports:

Security constraints defined by annotations of Servlets were only
applied once a Servlet had been loaded. Because security constraints
defined in this way apply to the URL pattern and any URLs below that
point, it was possible - depending on the order Servlets were loaded -
for some security constraints not to be applied. This could have exposed
resources to users who were not authorised to access them.

The URL pattern of “” (the empty string) which exactly maps to the
context root was not correctly handled when used as part of a security
constraint definition. This caused the constraint to be ignored. It was,
therefore, possible for unauthorised users to gain access to web
application resources that should have been protected. Only security
constraints with a URL pattern of the empty string were affected.