Peter Firmstone wrote:
Fred Oliver wrote:
To at least partially answer my own question, I think that the answer
is that the socket can't be closed (at least in all cases).
If the delegate for a resource has multiple users (codebases,
principals, etc.) then closing the resource because permission for one
of the users has been revoked denies access to the resource by the
remaining valid users. (This allows a denial of service attack.) And
then, if you can't close the resource (socket), you can't kick loose
the no longer trusted thread blocked reading from it. You may be able
to determine the special case of no user retaining access (everyone's
access was revoked) and can then close the resource.
In the standard security model, there are no checks for
reading/writing sockets. Allowing revocation means that checks must be
added for each individual read or write call on the socket streams. Is
that level of performance satisfactory?
I've just spotted a possible performance improvement.
We can eliminate the end() call in the finally block, put all the
checkPermission calls there instead. This substantially reduces the
caching operations. Perhaps we can manage the Socket some other way, we
just block unauthorised access using the delegate?
try {
// Do some processing
return something;
} finally {
ECM.checkPermission(Collection<Permission> permissions);
}
The current expense for making a Permission call via ECM (remembering
the first is always going to be expensive), currently requires the three
ECM calls in succession:
begin();
checkPermission(perm);
end();
begin():
1. Associate the thread with the reaper.
checkPermission(perm):
1. Obtain the read lock;
2. Add the current thread to the execution cache.
3. Associate the current AccessControlContext with the current thread
4. Check if the AccessControlContext has been checked for this
Permission previously.
5. If it has been checked before, return, else do
AccessController.checkPermission(perm), cache the result if it
succeeds.
Each end():
1. Obtain the read lock;
2. Remove the thread and reaper from the cache.
3. Remove the thread association with the AccessControlContext.
4. Remove the thread from the execution cache.
This could be simplified to (no reaper or thread caching):
checkPermission(perms)
1. Obtain the read lock;
2. For each Permission, check if the current AccessControlContext has
been checked for this Permission previously, if so return.
(HashMap lookup - fast).
3. If the AccessControlContext hasn't been checked previously, do
AccessController.checkPermission(perm), cache the result if it
succeeds, then return.
So for performance reasons, it looks like we need to be considering some
other way to manage the Socket, the ECM would serve us better if we kept
it simple?
I think your earlier suggestion of an event notification might be more
useful, if provided as a parameter in the checkPermission call, in the
event of failure, an event would be generated, the delegate could then
decide what action to take. If it only had one user, then it knows to
close the Socket, if it has multiple users, it might just keep score.
This stops the transmission of data from unauthorised code, but it
doesn't close the socket.
If there is an interface such as:
public interface PermissionChangeDelegate {
public void permissionGranted( Permissions p );
public void permissionRevoked( Permissions p );
}
and the code invokes a method with a signature like:
public void checkPermission( Permissions p, PermissionChangeDelegate del );
and the provider of this method is associated with grants and revokes such that
it can know who checking for such permission uses, then there can be a callback
to all the delegates at revocation, and the socket can be closed as appropriate
based on the knowledge of the PermissionChangeDelegate.
But, in the end, I really do think that this is too low of a level for
permission checks. Open ended resources should not be visible in the API
without some sort of wrapper class. I create subclasses of OutputStream and
InputStream etc. to hold references of sockets and perform checks there by not
using the SecurityManager, but by using the JDBC backed database which is
completely cached in memory in the auth.dev.java.net project. With that
facility, I don't have to worry about what granularity of "Permission" has been
designed into the JVM resources. Instead, I can put an appropriately grained
control layer on top of my API, and that layer can do what is needed to manage
things, because every API call is checked, and if a permission is revoked, that
fact is instantly reflected into all security delegates, and the APIs will be
controlled based on the granularity I've decided on.
Gregg Wonderly
