The Evolution of Web Applications

In the early days of the Internet, the World Wide Web consisted only of web sites. These were essentially information repositories containing static documents, and web browsers were invented as a means of retrieving and displaying those documents, as shown in Figure. The flow of interesting information was one-way, from server to browser. Most sites … Read more

Web Application (In)security

There is no doubt that web application security is a current and very news-worthy subject. For all concerned, the stakes are high: for businesses that derive increasing revenue from Internet commerce, for users who trust web applications with sensitive information, and for criminals who can make big money by stealing payment details or compromising bank … Read more

Java Bytecode

A Bytecode Example Though you may not realize it, you have already seen an example of bytecode or at least its human readable format. The output generated by the javap command when we ran it with the -c flag contained a disassembly of each of the methods in the class file. Let’s consider now the … Read more

The Constant Pool

We said  that the constant pool contains a great deal of information. In fact it contains an interesting mixture of items. The constant pool combines the function of a symbol table for linking purposes as well as a repository for constant values and string literals present in the source code. It may be considered as … Read more

The Java 2 Class File Format

The class file contains a lot more information than its cousin, the executable file. Of course, it still contains the same type of information: program requirements, an identifier indicating that this is a program and executable code (bytecode, in this case). However, it also contains some very rich information about the original source code. The … Read more

The Java Development Life Cycle

Moving back to the world of Java, we see that it is a high-level programming language and that bytecode is the low-level machine language of the JVM. Java is an object-oriented language; that is, it deals primarily with objects and their interrelationships. Objects are best thought of in this context as a collection of data … Read more

Class Files in Java 2

The Traditional Development Life Cycle Java is a compiled language. That is, source code is written in a high-level language and then converted through a process of compilation to a machine-level language, the Java bytecode, which then runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Before we look more closely at Java bytecode. Program files are … Read more

The Java Virtual Machine

Understanding how the various components of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) cooperate to provide a secure execution environment will enable you to understand how to administer your own security policy using the new features of Java 2 and to know when you should consider implementing your own extensions to provide a more tailored security policy. … Read more

Security Management with Java 2

In this article we show you how to apply the security features of Java 2 to applets and applications running on your system. Applying a Security Manager to Applets and Applications The security manager is invoked by all the Java system code to perform access control checks based on the security policy currently in effect. … Read more

Kernel Modules Versus Applications

Before we go further, it’s worth underlining the various differences between a kernel module and an application. Whereas an application performs a single task from beginning to end, a module registers itself in order to serve future requests, and its “main” function terminates immediately. In other words, the task of the function init_module (the module’s entry … Read more