jdk.internal.reflect.ReflectionFactory and SecurityManager

[David Holmes]

Hi Peter,

I know this is response to the problems with your other recent change, 
but this is an enhancement in my opinion, not a bug fix, and the time 
for enhancements is passed - though there is still a process to request 
them. I do not like to see last minutes changes like this where not 
enough due diligence may be done to identify all the ramifications.

The Class.getMethod() fixes seem to have overstepped the line in that 
regard as well, in my opinion. Anything that potentially changes 
initialization order is fragile and risky and requires additional testing.

That said, I am an admirer of your work on OpenJDK! :)

Cheers,
David


On 27/12/2016 5:29 AM, 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
>