SEC31-J. Never grant AllPermission

The java.security.AllPermission class grants all possible permissions to the caller. This facility was included for routine testing purposes to make it less cumbersome to deal with a multitude of permissions or for use when the code is completely trusted. It should never find place in production code.

Noncompliant Code Example

This noncompliant example grants AllPermission to a library (klib). The permission itself is specified in the security policy file used by the security manager. Alternatively, a permission object can be obtained in the code by subclassing the Permission class (or any subclass like BasicPermission) in the java.security package.

/* grant the klib library AllPermission */ 
grant codebase "file:${klib.home}/j2ee/home/klib.jar" { 
  permission java.security.AllPermission; 
}; 

Compliant Solution

The policy file can be signed and made to provide more restrictive permissions.

grant codeBase "file:${klib.home}/j2ee/home/klib.jar", signedBy "Admin" {
    permission java.io.FilePermission "/tmp/*", "read";
    permission java.io.SocketPermission "*", "connect";
};

Always assign appropriate permissions to code. This can be achieved by extending any of the permission classes. The solution below shows how to implement restrictive permissions within the code.

//security manager code
perm = new java.io.FilePermission("/tmp/JavaFile","read");
//other code

Risk Assessment

TODO

Automated Detection

TODO

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

(h2. Ref)erences

Inside Java 2 Platform Security
Java documentation http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/security/AllPermission.html
Java Documentation http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/security/spec/security-spec.doc3.html