Java flaw is in bytecode verifier

[Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>]

>From http://java.sun.com/sfaq/960327.html:
> Researchers at Princeton recently found an implementation bug in the Java
> bytecode Verifier. The Verifier is a part of Java's runtime system which
> certifies that applets downloaded over the Internet adhere to Java's
> language safety rules. Through a sophisticated attack, a malicious applet
> can exploit this bug to delete a file or do other damage.

This is one of the more worrisome places for a bug to exist.  Much of
Java's security rests in the claim that it can screen for and detect bad
bytecode sequences.  This screening code is extremely critical for Java
security and I am surprised to see that it was implemented in a flawed
manner.

I've been writing Java quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, and I
find that I have crashed my browser, whether Netscape or appletviewer,
many times.  Granted some of my code has been pretty buggy, but it's
still not supposed to crash the browser.  Obviously some of the runtime
checks are not being done properly.  I had expected that the bug would
be in these areas, something like the stack overflows that we have seen
cause problems in the past.  A simple error in the bytecode verifier
(if that is what this really is) seems like a more fundamental security
flaw.

The researchers have still not released full details on the bug, although
they had planned to do so by the end of March.  Maybe they are waiting
for the fix to be distributed.

Hal