jdk.internal.reflect.ReflectionFactory and SecurityManager

[Claes Redestad]

Hi,

with strong encapsulation in place this seems perfectly fine to me.

The only downside is that we will lose the extra reminder that the
ReflectionFactory must not escape to untrusted code, but I think we can
all help ensure that doesn't happen, right? :-)

Thanks!

/Claes

On 2016-12-26 20:29, Peter Levart wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There are 2 ReflectionFactory classes in JDK 9. The old one is
> sun.reflect.ReflectionFactory which ended in jdk.unsupported module and
> to which access is restricted with SecurityManager. There is also new
> jdk.internal.reflect.ReflectionFactory which is used internally by JDK,
> is exported to internal modules only but still uses SecurityManager to
> restrict access to itself. I checked all usages and they all use
> AccessControler.doPrivileged() for obtaining the instance of
> jdk.internal.reflect.ReflectionFactory, which somehow defeats the
> purpose of SecurityManager access checks in this API.
>
> I think this could be simplified by removing the SecurityManager check
> from jdk.internal.reflect.ReflectionFactory#getReflectionFactory static
> method and change all usages to invoke this method directly without
> doPrivileged(). There are already two sensitive internal APIs exposed
> without SecurityManager checks: jdk.internal.misc.Unsafe#getUnsafe and
> various jdk.internal.misc.SharedSecrets#getXxxAccess methods. So why
> wouldn't internal ReflectionFactory be exposed the same way?
>
> This would make obtaining the ReflectionFactory more robust and not
> sensitive to bootstrap issues that surfaced recently after my push of a
> fix for issues 8062389, 8029459, 8061950.
>
> So, what do you think? Is this a worthwhile cleanup and simplification?
>
> Regards, Peter
>