New candidate JEP: 451: Prepare to Disallow the Dynamic Loading of Agents

[Ron Pressler]

Because the discussion of this JEP has veered in many directions, let me summarise where we are:

This JEP proposes to emit a suppressible warning when a JVM TI or Java agent is loaded into a JVM sometime after startup through the Attach mechanism.

The warning helps make users aware that an agent has been injected into the JVM and identify deployments that may need adjustment in advance of any future changes to disallow agents from being dynamically loaded without the application's consent. The warning will also let us better judge the impact of such a future change.

— Ron

> On 8 May 2023, at 20:17, Mark Reinhold <mark.reinhold at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> https://openjdk.org/jeps/451
> 
>  Summary: Issue warnings when agents are loaded dynamically into a
>  running JVM. These warnings aim to prepare users for a future release
>  which disallows the dynamic loading of agents by default in order to
>  improve integrity by default. Serviceability tools that load agents at
>  startup will not cause warnings to be issued in any release.
> 
> - Mark