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Conversely, the assumption that two classes deriving from the same codebase are the same is error prone. Although this assumption is commonly observed to be true in desktop applications, it is typically not the case with J2EE servlet containers. The containers can use different class loader instances to deploy and recall applications at runtime without having to restart the JVM. In such situations, two objects whose classes come from the same codebase could appear to the JVM to be two different classes. Also note that the equals() method might not return true when comparing objects originating from the same codebase.

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Comparing classes solely using their names can allow a malicious class to bypass security checks and gain access to protected resources.

Automated Detection

Related Guidelines

Bibliography

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