WWW:Beyond the Basics

14 Java Security

14.3 Security Threats

An untrusted applet poses a lot of security threats. Some of them are presented in this section. An important part of creating a safe environment for a program to run, is in identifying the resources and then providing certain types of limited access to these resources. The following are the types of attacks from malicious applets:

Table 14.1 provides an example of the types of problems associated with a given resource.

TABLE 14.1: Host Resources Used by Attacks
Resource Disclosure Availability Integrity Annoyance
File system x x x x
Network x - - x
Random Memory x x x x
Output Devices (CRT, Speaker, etc) - - - x
Input Devices (Keyboard, Microphone, etc) x x - x
Process Control - x - x
User Environment x - x x
System Calls x x x x

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Vijay Sureshkumar <vijay@csgrad.cs.vt.edu>
Last modified: Sun Oct 20 21:52:09 1996