upgrade dependencies

[perNyfelt]

Some of our dependencies have know security issues in the version we are using. I upgraded everything I could that does not require any changes to code. The remaining 3 (vfs, jline and commons-math require quite a lot of changes so saving those for a rainy day;)

• aetherVersion = "1.0.2.v20150114" to "1.1.0"
• mavenVersion = "3.1.0" to "3.3.9"
• org.apache.maven:maven-plugin-api:2.0 -> 3.3.9
• org.apache.maven:maven-model:2.0 -> 3.3.9
• org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-compiler-api:${plexusCompilerVersion} -> 2.9.0
• org.apache.maven.plugin-tools:maven-plugin-annotations:3.4' - > 3.6.4
• org.apache.maven.surefire:surefire-api:2.13 -> 2.22.2
• org.json:json:20180130 - > 20211205
• add "org.eclipse.sisu:org.eclipse.sisu.plexus:0.3.5" to get org.codehaus.plexus.logging.AbstractLogEnabled . Junit:4.11 -> 4.13.2
• org.slf4j:slf4j-api:1.6.1, 1.7.5 - 1.7.35
• org.slf4j:slf4j-jdk14:1.6.1 -> 1.7.35
• org.slf4j:slf4j-simple:1.7.5 -> 1.7.35
• org.easymock:easymock:3.1 -> 4.3
• javax.servlet:javax.servlet-api:3.0.1 -> 4.0.1
• javax.servlet:javax.servlet-api:3.0.1 -> 4.0.1
• org.jfree:jfreesvg:3.3 -> 3.4.2
• org.soot-oss:soot:4.2.1 -> 4.3.0
• org.apache.commons:commons-compress:1.18 -> 1.21
• org.tukaani:xz:1.8 -> 1.9
• com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:2.8.11.1 -> 2.13.1
• com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-annotations:2.8.0 -> 2.13.1
• com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core:2.8.10 -> 2.13.1
• com.google.code.findbugs:jsr305:3.0.0 -> 3.0.2

Mirror .m2 dir to /home/vagrant/.m2 to enable ./gradlew publishToMavenLocal

Minor code cleanup

I've noticed that sometimes there is a timing issue with the forked test (it times out before the test name has been set resulting in an NPE) it is intermittent and difficult to repeat reliably so i just added a simple NPE safeguard.

I have run through the entire build a couple of times with no issues and also run some example code using the build to verify things without seeing any problems.