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Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1995-07-28 - Re: Java, Netscape, OpenDoc, and Babel

Header Data

From: “Perry E. Metzger” <perry@imsi.com>
To: solman@MIT.EDU
Message Hash: d5531fa64e5b8f5b6384f22f7e659911e55c80ea3bb38aa7793e15a76db76303
Message ID: <9507281633.AA27805@snark.imsi.com>
Reply To: <9507281615.AA23005@ua.MIT.EDU>
UTC Datetime: 1995-07-28 16:33:40 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 28 Jul 95 09:33:40 PDT

Raw message

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 95 09:33:40 PDT
To: solman@MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Java, Netscape, OpenDoc, and Babel
In-Reply-To: <9507281615.AA23005@ua.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <9507281633.AA27805@snark.imsi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



solman@MIT.EDU writes:
> What's with the facetious questions? Only an idiot would guarantee a piece
> of software to be error free. I am highly confident that there is very
> little probability of a raider applet doing significant damage.

I see little reason for such confidence.

> |> I like systems that are more fail-safe. About half a dozen
> |> simultaneous bugs would be needed to break some of my more secure
> |> firewalls, for example. Java does *not* provide security in depth.
> 
> I think that the high level architecture of Java provides as much security
> as such a product can possibly provide.

Thats far from true as well. The Java interpreter could have all its
I/O abilities removed, for example, rather than relying on correct
implementation of the possibly correct language model to keep users
from performing I/O. -- I can name lots of similar things.

Having designed systems to be as secure as possible, I'd say that Java
violates lots of the constraints. Its too big, too complicated, and
relies for its security on the correctness of its implementation.

> By the time Java becomes widely distributed (it is still in Alpha3),
> I expect it to have features that deny access to any applet not
> signed by somebody in a list the user creates, a sort of web of
> trust.

Again, this depends on the correctness of the implementation.

> On top of this layer, Java already offers rudimentary
> firewalls.

What?????

.pm

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