Section 1.6. Application and User-Level Security


1.6. Application and User-Level Security

There's a fine line between having enough power to do something useful and having all the power to do anything you want. Java provides the foundation for a secure environment in which untrusted code can be quarantined, managed, and safely executed. However, unless you are content with keeping that code in a little black box and running it just for its own benefit, you will have to grant it access to at least some system resources so that it can be useful. Every kind of access carries with it certain risks and benefits. For example, in the web browser environment, the advantages of granting an untrusted (unknown) applet access to your windowing system are that it can display information and let you interact in a useful way. The associated risks are that the applet may instead display something worthless, annoying, or offensive. Since most people can accept that level of risk, graphical applets and the Web in general are possible.

At one extreme, the simple act of running an application gives it a resourcecomputation timethat it may put to good use or burn frivolously. It's difficult to prevent an untrusted application from wasting your time or even attempting a "denial of service" attack. At the other extreme, a powerful, trusted application may justifiably deserve access to all sorts of system resources (e.g., the filesystem, process creation, network interfaces); a malicious application could wreak havoc with these resources. The message here is that important and sometimes complex security issues have to be addressed.

In some situations, it may be acceptable to simply ask the user to "okay" requests. With Sun's Java plug-in, web browsers can pop up a dialog box and ask the user's permission for an applet to access an otherwise restricted file. However, we can put only so much burden on our users. An experienced person will quickly grow tired of answering questions; an inexperienced user may not be able to answer the questions correctly. Is it okay for me to grant an applet access to something if I don't understand what that is?

Making decisions about what is dangerous and what is not can be difficult. Even ostensibly harmless access, such as displaying a window, can become a threat when paired with the ability of an untrusted application to communicate from your host. The Java Security Manager provides an option to flag windows created by an untrusted application with a special, recognizable border to prevent it from impersonating another application and perhaps tricking you into revealing your password or your secret recipe collection. There is also a grey area, in which an application can do devious things that aren't quite destructive. An applet that can mail a bug report can also mail-bomb your boss. The Java language provides the tools to implement whatever security policies you want. However, what these policies will be ultimately depends on who you are, what you are doing, and where you are doing it.

1.6.1. Signing Classes

Web browsers that run Java applets start by defining a few rules and some coarse levels of security that restrict where applets may come from and what system resources they may access. These rules are sufficient to keep a malicious applet from attacking you, but they aren't sufficient for applications you'd like to trust with sensitive information. To fully exploit the power of Java, we need to have some nontechnical basis on which to make reasonable decisions about what a program can be allowed to do. This nontechnical basis is trust; basically, you trust certain entities not to do anything that's harmful to you. For a home user, this may mean that you trust the "Bank of Boofa" to distribute applets that let you transfer funds between your accounts, or you may trust L.L. Bean to distribute an applet that debits your Visa account. For a company, this may mean you trust applets originating behind your firewall and perhaps applets from a few high-priority customers to modify internal databases. In all these cases, you don't need to know in detail what the program is going to do and give it permission for each operation. You only need to know that you trust the source.

This doesn't mean that there isn't a technical aspect to the problem of trust. Trusting your local bank when you walk up to the ATM means one thing; trusting some web page that claims to come from your local bank means something else entirely. It would be very difficult to impersonate the ATM two blocks down the street (though it has been known to happen), but, depending on your position on the Net, it's not all that difficult to impersonate a web site or to intercept data coming from a legitimate web site and substitute your own.

That's where cryptography comes in. Digital signatures, together with certificates, are techniques for verifying that data truly comes from the source it claims to have come from and hasn't been modified en route. If the Bank of Boofa signs its checkbook applet, your browser can verify that the applet actually came from the bank, not an imposter, and hasn't been modified. Therefore, you can tell your browser to trust applets that have the Bank of Boofa's signature. Java supports digital signatures; some of the details are covered in Chapter 23.



    Learning Java
    Learning Java
    ISBN: 0596008732
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 262

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