CON30-J. Do not execute interdependent tasks in a bounded thread pool

A bounded thread pool allows the the programmer to specify the upper limit on the number of threads that can execute in a thread pool at a particular time. Tasks that depend on the completion of other tasks should not be executed in the same bounded thread pool.

A form of deadlock called thread starvation deadlock arises when all the threads executing in the pool are blocked on tasks that have not yet begun execution and are waiting on an internal queue. Thread starvation deadlock occurs when currently-executing tasks submit other tasks to the same thread pool and wait for them to complete, but the thread pool does not have the capacity to accommodate all the tasks at once.

This problem is deceptive because the program may appear to function correctly when fewer threads are needed. In some cases, the issue can be mitigated by choosing a larger pool size, however, there is often no easy way to determine a suitable size.

Similarly, threads in a thread pool may not be recycled if two executing tasks require each other to complete before they can terminate. A blocking operation within a sub-task can also lead to unbounded queue growth [[Goetz 06]].

Noncompliant Code Example (Interdependent Sub-tasks)

This noncompliant code example is vulnerable to thread starvation deadlock. It consists of class ValidationService which performs various input validation tasks such as checking whether a user-supplied field exists in a back-end database.

The fieldAggregator() method accepts a variable number of String arguments and creates a task corresponding to each argument to parallelize processing. The task performs input validation using the ValidateInput class.

In turn, the ValidateInput class attempts to sanitize the input by creating a sub-task for each request using the SanitizeInput class. All tasks are executed in the same thread pool. The fieldAggregator() method blocks until all the tasks have finished executing, and when all results are available, returns the aggregated results as a StringBuilder object to the caller.

public final class ValidationService {
  private final ExecutorService pool;

  public ValidationService(int poolSize) {
    pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(poolSize);
  }
  
  public void shutdown() {
    pool.shutdown();
  }
     
  public StringBuilder fieldAggregator(String... inputs) 
    throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException {
   
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    Future<String>[] results = new Future[inputs.length]; // Stores the results
		
    for (int i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) { // Submits the tasks to thread pool
      results[i] = pool.submit(new ValidateInput<String>(inputs[i], pool));     
    } 

    for (int i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) { // Aggregates the results	    	
      sb.append(results[i].get());	    	
    }
    return sb;
  }
}

public final class ValidateInput<V> implements Callable<V> {
  private final V input;
  private final ExecutorService pool;

  ValidateInput(V input, ExecutorService pool) {
    this.input = input;
    this.pool = pool;
  }

  @Override public V call() throws Exception {
    // If validation fails, throw an exception here
    Future<V> future = pool.submit(new SanitizeInput<V>(input)); // Sub-task
    return (V)future.get();
  }
}

public final class SanitizeInput<V> implements Callable<V> {
  private final V input;
	
  SanitizeInput(V input) {
    this.input = input;
  }

  @Override public V call() throws Exception {
    // Sanitize input and return
    return (V)input;	
  }
}

Let's assume that the pool size is set to six. The ValidationService.fieldAggregator() method is invoked to validate six arguments, which submits six tasks to the thread pool. Each of these six tasks submits a corresponding sub-tasks to sanitize the input. The SanitizeInput sub-tasks must execute before these threads can return their results. However, this is impossible because all six threads in the thread pool are blocked. Furthermore, the shutdown() method cannot shutdown the thread pool when it contains active tasks.

Thread starvation deadlock can also occur when using a single threaded Executor, for example, when the caller creates several sub-tasks and waits for the results.

Compliant Solution (No Interdependent Tasks)

This compliant solution modifies the ValidateInput<V> class so that the SanitizeInput tasks are executed in the same threads as the ValidateInput tasks and not in separate threads. Consequently, the ValidateInput and SanitizeInput tasks are independent and need not wait for each other to complete. The SanitizeInput class has also been modified to not implement Callable.

public final class ValidationService {
  // ...
  public StringBuilder fieldAggregator(String... inputs) 
    throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException {
    // ...
    for (int i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
      results[i] = pool.submit(new ValidateInput<String>(inputs[i])); // Don't pass-in thread pool    
    } 
    // ...
  } 
}

public final class ValidateInput<V> implements Callable<V> { // Does not use same thread pool
  private final V input;
	
  ValidateInput(V input) {
    this.input = input;
  }

  @Override public V call() throws Exception {
    // If validation fails, throw an exception here
    return (V) new SanitizeInput().sanitize(input);
  }
}

public final class SanitizeInput<V> {  // No longer a Callable task	
  public SanitizeInput() {}

  public V sanitize(V input) {
    // Sanitize input and return
    return input;	
  }
}

Thread starvation issues can be mitigated by choosing a large thread pool size, however, adding too many threads can cause a system to becomes unresponsive, resulting in a denial of service (see [CON29-J. Use thread pools to enable graceful degradation of service during traffic bursts]).

Note that operations that have further constraints, such as the total number of database connections or total ResultSet objects open at a particular time, impose an upper bound on the thread pool size as each thread continues to block until the resource becomes available.

Private static ThreadLocal variable may be used to maintain local state in each thread. When using thread pools, the lifetime of ThreadLocal variables should be bounded by the corresponding task [[Goetz 06]]. Furthermore, these variables should not to communicate between tasks. There are also additional constraints in the use of ThreadLocal variables in thread pools (see [CON33-J. Ensure ThreadLocal variables are reinitialized when using thread pools]).

public final class ValidationService {
  private final ExecutorService pool;

  public ValidationService(int poolSize) {
    pool = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
  }
  // ...
}

Noncompliant Code Example (Sub-tasks)

This noncompliant code example contains a series of sub-tasks that each execute in a shared thread pool [[Gafter 06]]. The BrowserManager class calls perUser() which starts tasks which invoke perProfile which start tasks which invoke perTab() which starts tasks that invoke doSomething(). The BrowserManager then waits for the tasks to finish. The threads are allowed to invoke doSomething() in any order provided that count correctly records the number of methods executed.

public final class BrowserManager {
  private final ExecutorService pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(10);
  private final int numberOfTimes;
  private static AtomicInteger count = new AtomicInteger(); // count = 0

  public BrowserManager(int n) {
    numberOfTimes = n;
  }

  public void perUser() {  
    methodInvoker(numberOfTimes, "perProfile"); 
    pool.shutdown();
  }

  public void perProfile() {
    methodInvoker(numberOfTimes, "perTab");   
  }

  public void perTab() {  
    methodInvoker(numberOfTimes, "doSomething");
  }

  public void doSomething() {
    System.out.println(count.getAndIncrement());
  }

  public void methodInvoker(int n, final String method) {
    final BrowserManager manager = this;
    Callable<Object> callable = new Callable<Object>() {
      @Override public Object call() throws Exception {
        Method meth = manager.getClass().getMethod(method);
        return meth.invoke(manager);      
      }
    };  

    Collection<Callable<Object>> collection = Collections.nCopies(n, callable); 
    try {
      Collection<Future<Object>> futures = pool.invokeAll(collection);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {     
      // Forward to handler  
      Thread.currentThread().interrupt(); // Reset interrupted status
    }
    // ... 
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    BrowserManager manager = new BrowserManager(5);
    manager.perUser();
  }
}

Unfortunately, this program is susceptible to a thread starvation deadlock. For example, if each of the five perUser threads start five perProfile threads which each spawn a perTab thread, the thread pool will be exhausted and it will not be possible for perTab() to allocate any additional threads to invoke the doSomething() method.

Compliant Solution (CallerRunsPolicy)

This compliant solution selects and schedules tasks for execution; avoiding thread starvation deadlock. It sets the CallerRunsPolicy on a ThreadPoolExecutor, and uses a SynchronousQueue [[Gafter 06]]. The policy dictates that if the thread pool runs out of available threads, any subsequent tasks will run in the thread that submitted the tasks.

public final class BrowserManager {
  private final static ThreadPoolExecutor pool =
    new ThreadPoolExecutor(0, 10, 60L, TimeUnit.SECONDS,
                           new SynchronousQueue<Runnable>());
  private final int numberOfTimes;
  private static AtomicInteger count = new AtomicInteger(); // count = 0

  static {
    pool.setRejectedExecutionHandler(
    new ThreadPoolExecutor.CallerRunsPolicy());
  }

  // ... 
}	

According to Goetz et al. [[Goetz 06]]:

A SynchronousQueue is not really a queue at all, but a mechanism for managing handoffs between threads. In order to put an element on the SynchronousQueue, another thread must already be waiting to accept the handoff. It no thread is waiting but the current pool size is less than the maximum, ThreadPoolExecutor creates a new thread; otherwise the task is rejected according to the saturation policy.

According to the Java API [[API 06]], the CallerRunsPolicy class is:

A handler for rejected tasks that runs the rejected task directly in the calling thread of the execute method, unless the executor has been shut down, in which case the task is discarded.

In this compliant solution, tasks that have other tasks waiting to accept the hand-off are added to the SynchronousQueue when the thread pool is full. For example, tasks corresponding to perTab() are added to the SynchronousQueue because the tasks corresponding to perProfile() are waiting to receive the hand-off. Once the pool is full, additional tasks are rejected according to the saturation policy in effect. Because the CallerRunsPolicy is used to handle these rejected tasks, all the rejected tasks are executed in the main thread that started the initial tasks. When all the threads corresponding to perTab() have finished executing, the next set of tasks corresponding to perProfile() are added to the SynchronousQueue because the hand-off is subsequently used by perUser() tasks . Consequently, all tasks are executed in bottom-up fashion.

The caller-runs policy allows graceful degradation of service when faced with many requests by distributing the workload from the thread pool to the work queue. Because the submitted tasks do not block for any reason other than waiting for other tasks to complete, the caller-runs policy guarantees that the current thread can handle multiple tasks sequentially. The caller-runs policy would not prevent thread-starvation deadlock if the tasks were to block for some other reason, such as network IO. Furthermore, because SynchronousQueue does not store tasks indefinitely for future execution, there is no unbounded queue growth, and all tasks are handled by the current thread, or by a thread in the thread pool.

This compliant solution is subject to the vagaries of the thread scheduler which may not optimally schedule the tasks, however, it avoids thread starvation deadlock.

Risk Assessment

Executing interdependent tasks in a thread pool can lead to denial of service.

Automated Detection

TODO

Related Vulnerabilities

Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this rule on the CERT website.

References

[[API 06]]
[[Gafter 06]] A Thread Pool Puzzler
[[Goetz 06]] 8.3.2 "Managing queued tasks", 8.3.3 "Saturation Policies", 5.3.3 Deques and work stealing

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