Summary

We haven't had any reports of this logging being indicative of an issue within Confluence, references to this kind of logging have amounted to being more like noise.

Environment

This problem was identified in Confluence server and datacenter version 7.9.1. It could also affect other versions of Confluence.

Diagnosis

The following is found in catalina.out:

2020-12-08 01:12:07,975 INFO [main] [com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle] contextInitialized Starting Confluence 7.9.1 [build 8505 based on commit hash ff7e2168e6612de568868b1da57f8ff07cb23164] - synchrony version 4.0.0-master-85ceb9cf
...
ESAPI: WARNING: System property [org.owasp.esapi.opsteam] is not set
ESAPI: WARNING: System property [org.owasp.esapi.devteam] is not set
ESAPI: Attempting to load ESAPI.properties via file I/O.
ESAPI: Attempting to load ESAPI.properties as resource file via file I/O.
ESAPI: Not found in 'org.owasp.esapi.resources' directory or file not readable: /home/confluence1/ESAPI.properties
ESAPI: Not found in SystemResource Directory/resourceDirectory: .esapi/ESAPI.properties
ESAPI: Not found in 'user.home' (/home/confluence1) directory: /home/confluence1/esapi/ESAPI.properties
ESAPI: Loading ESAPI.properties via file I/O failed. Exception was: java.io.FileNotFoundException

Cause

Confluence doesn't natively use OWASP Enterprise Security API (ESAPI) by default, so these entries are being logged as a result of using a third-party app.  

Solution

Follow Temporarily disable apps on startup to verify if this is caused by a third-party app. To identify which app is throwing the warnings, you may use the Split-Half Search technique by following the steps below:

1. After enabling safe mode, enable half apps back, and check the problem.
2. If the problem remains, then the problem is within the half you enabled. If not, then the app throwing this error is within the half you left disabled
3. Repeat this process until you identify the problematic app.