ENV03-J. Do not grant dangerous combinations of permissions

Certain combinations of permissions can produce significant capability increases, and should not be granted. Other permissions should only be granted to special code.

AllPermission

The permission java.security.AllPermission grants all possible permissions to code. This facility was included to reduce the burden of managing a multitude of permissions during routine testing, as well as when a body of code is completely trusted. Code is typically granted AllPermission via the security policy file; it is also possible to programmatically associate AllPermission with a ProtectionDomain. This permission is dangerous in production environments; never grant AllPermission to untrusted code.

ReflectPermission on suppressAccessChecks

The suppressAccessChecks permission granted in the context of java.lang.reflect.ReflectPermission suppresses all standard Java language access checks when the permitted class attempts to operate on public, default, protected, or private members of another class. Consequently, the permitted class can obtain permissions to examine any field or invoke any method belonging to an arbitrary class [[Reflect 2006]]. Therefore the suppressAccessChecks permision must never be granted with ReflectPermission.

According to the technical note, Permissions in the Java SE 6 Development Kit [[Permissions 2008]], Section ReflectPermission, target suppressAccessChecks:

Warning: Extreme caution should be taken before granting this permission to code, for it provides the ability to access fields and invoke methods in a class. This includes not only public, but protected and private fields and methods as well.

RuntimePermission on createClassLoader

The java.lang.RuntimePermission target createClassLoader grants permission to code so that it can create a ClassLoader object. This is extremely dangerous because malicious code can create its own custom class loader and load classes by assigning them arbitrary permissions. A custom class loader can define a class (or ProtectionDomain) with permissions that override any restrictions specified in the system-wide security policy file.

The document Permissions 2008, in Section RuntimePermission, says:

This is an extremely dangerous permission to grant. Malicious applications that can instantiate their own class loaders could then load their own rogue classes into the system. These newly loaded classes could be placed into any protection domain by the class loader, thereby automatically granting the classes the permissions for that domain.

Noncompliant Code Example (Security Policy File)

This noncompliant example grants AllPermission to the klib library.

// Grant the klib library AllPermission  
grant codebase "file:${klib.home}/j2se/home/klib.jar" { 
  permission java.security.AllPermission; 
}; 

The permission itself is specified in the security policy file used by the security manager. Program code can obtain a permission object by subclassing the java.security.Permission class or any of its subclasses (for examle, BasicPermission). The code can use the resulting object to grant AllPermission to a ProtectionDomain. This is bad practice.

Compliant Solution

This compliant solution shows a policy file that can be used to enforce fine-grained permissions.

grant codeBase "file:${klib.home}/j2se/home/klib.jar", signedBy "Admin" {
  permission java.io.FilePermission "/tmp/*", "read";
  permission java.io.SocketPermission "*", "connect";
};

To check whether the caller has the requisite permissions, standard Java APIs use code, such as the following:

// Security manager code
FilePermission perm = new java.io.FilePermission("/tmp/JavaFile", "read");
AccessController.checkPermission(perm);
// ...

Always assign appropriate permissions to code. Define custom permissions when the granularity of the standard permissions is insufficient.

Noncompliant Code Example (PermissionCollection)

This noncompliant code example shows an overridden getPermissions() method, defined in a custom class loader. It grants java.lang.ReflectPermission with target suppressAccessChecks to any class that it loads.

protected PermissionCollection getPermissions(CodeSource cs) {
  PermissionCollection pc = super.getPermissions(cs);
  pc.add(new ReflectPermission("suppressAccessChecks"));   // permission to create a class loader
  // other permissions
  return pc;
}

Compliant Solution

This compliant solution omits granting the java.lang.ReflectPermission with target suppressAccessChecks to any class that it loads.

protected PermissionCollection getPermissions(CodeSource cs) {
  PermissionCollection pc = super.getPermissions(cs);
  // other permissions
  return pc;
}

Exceptions

ENV03-EX0: It may be necessary to grant AllPermission to trusted library code so that callbacks work as expected. For example, it is common practice, and acceptable, to grant AllPermission to the optional Java packages (extension libraries):

// Standard extensions extend the core platform and are granted all permissions by default
grant codeBase "file:${{java.ext.dirs}}/*" {
  permission java.security.AllPermission;
};

Risk Assessment

Granting AllPermission to untrusted code allows it to perform privileged operations.

Automated Detection

Static detection of potential uses of dangerous permissions is a trivial search. Automated determination of the correctness of such uses is not feasible.

Related Vulnerabilities

Related Guidelines

Bibliography

ENV02-J. Use system properties rather than environment variables      15. Runtime Environment (ENV)