Basic HTML version of Foils prepared 18 May 97

Foil 30 Security Concerns for Applets

From Java Tutorial - Spring 1997 Part 4: Multithreading, useful Java classes, I/O, Networking, and the future Peking Tutorial, Web Certificate -- Spring-Summer 1997. by Nancy J. McCracken,Geoffrey C. Fox


1 One aspect of Java security is language restrictions designed not to let a Java applet or application access memory on the machine outside of its own space.
2 Applets have additional restrictions:
  • they can never run a local executable program;
  • they cannot communicate with any host other than the server from which they were downloaded (the originating host);
  • they cannot read or write to the local computer's file system, except through the browser mechanism;
  • they cannot find out information about the local computer (see table on next slide for details).
3 As of summer 1996, no known applets have seriously broken security to steal client information or trash the local disk. Exceptions:
  • applets have been written to use up arbitrary amounts of client cpu.
  • applets with native code can trash the local disk. So far, native code is disallowed on publicly released browsers.

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