Unsafe Mobile Code: Public finalize() Method

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Abstract

The program violates secure coding principles for mobile code by declaring a finalize()method public.

Description

A program should never call finalize explicitly, except to call super.finalize() inside an implementation of finialize(). In mobile code situations, the otherwise error prone practice of manual garbage collection can become a security threat if an attacker can maliciously invoke one of your finalize() methods because it is declared with public access. If you are using finalize() as it was designed, there is no reason to declare finalize() with anything other than protected access.

For more details about mobile code and its security concerns, please see Category:Unsafe Mobile Code.

Examples

The following Java Applet code mistakenly declares a public finalize() method.

	public final class urlTool extends Applet {
		public void finalize() {
			...
		}
		...
	}