Grinding Java |
IntroductionDon't you hate it when someone beats you to it? I had a great idea for this months article: Teaching the structure of the class file and encrypting it so it cannot be decompiled. I finished a great deal of the work and then on Sunday when I entered www.javaworld.com I found out someone wrote almost the same article. Since this is now August and you will not be reading this before November it may seem as if I am simply copying from him so instead I will simply post my code and some explanation on the class file structure and will focus this month on security. The class fileWhen I first heard of the fact that Java uses separate files for each class it seemed odd, when I used it a bit I decided it was stupid. Today I consider the class file idea to be brilliant, one of Java's strongest features. What's so good about class files?
The references I used to analyze the file structure of the class files were Sun's VM spec and JDK 1.1.1 source code. I recommend everyone who is serious about Java, gets the source code for the JDK from Sun. You only need to sign an agreement and it is very clear and simple code. The class file has the following structure:
Both the fields and the methods have a similar structure:
Attributes have the following structure:
This structure is illustrated in Sun's documentation so I will not go into further detail. The full source code and JavaDoc documentation is attached here. Java covers very well the security concepts for program distribution yet it does not cover the security issues involved in class file decompilation, which allows hackers to modify your code and even steal technology. Using the class file format building a class which scrambles the code so it cannot be decompiled is relatively simple and there are already a couple of products on the market to do just that. There are however excellent Java decompilers as well. Java securityWhen writing about Java it is hard not to mention security, yet I was able to mostly avoid the subject since we have not developed any applets yet and without them Java's security is not quite as critical. Java has several types and layers of security:
Public/private key security conceptsThe public/private key security is already a well known subject yet for those of you who don't know it here is the gist of it: When you have a regular encryption mechanism side A who mails a letter encrypts the data using a key (password) and sends it. Side B who receives the encrypted data decodes it using the same password side a has. The problem: How does side A give the password to side B? This may cause a breach in security. Well the public/private key scheme solved this whole problem: Side A has two passwords and so does side B. Each side has a password of his own which he tells no one and a password which is common knowledge and was actually derived from the hidden password (private and public keys). When side B or anyone else for that matter wants to send to side A data which only side A will be able to read side B uses side A's public key to encrypt the data. The only one who will be able to decrypt the data is side A! When side A sends data to side B and wants side B to know that side A is the actual sender side A encodes the data using his private key. Anyone who has side A's public key can open the data, but only side a could have signed it! This allows fully secure transactions between individuals on the Internet. You may perform transactions with people knowing exactly who they are and you may be sure no one is reading your mail. However there are countries who consider encryption technology to be a weapon and it may be illegal to use it there. The java.security.* packagesCurrently Java supports the private/public key paradigm only for signatures JavaSoft will probably add support for encryption in JDK 1.2. The reason for the delay is with US encryption export rules which declare encryption to be a weapon. The security package's most important classes are the following classes: Signature, Identity, Provider, MessageDigest. Signature - In order to create a signature algorithm you must subclass this class and provide an implementation for the particular signing algorithm. If you wish to use a signing algorithm you need to call the static method getInstance with the name of the algorithm which returns an instance of the signing algorithm. The signature class contains several methods which must be implemented by the subclass, these methods are called by the standard class API and provide the abstraction necessary. The signature class receive feeds of data and a private key to use for signing and may receive a public key and an encoded stream for verification. Identity - An identity is a virtual person or organization, it may have Certificates verifying that the identity is legitimate. Certificate - A certificate is the signature of an entity which verifies that another entity is who it claims to be. If you trust the signing entity you should then be able to trust the certificate owner. Provider - The provider class is the class you must subclass to provide the algorithm for the encryption or any similar algorithm. This is in fact the engine class for all encryption algorithms. MessageDigest - The digest algorithm is an algorithm which takes a stream of data of unspecified length and converts it into a block of data of fixed length with the following properties:
The supplied program is very slow, especially if you use VAJ, this program did not work under VAJ and only worked under the JDK 1.1. I used the parameters DSA and c:\startup.cmd to test it and it. This program demonstrates a very simple signing and can be altered to fit most security needs and it can be expanded in JDK 1.2's security API. SummaryIt's been a shorter column than usual mostly due to the fact that I had another one in mind and had to change the subject in the middle of it's writing. Next month I will deal with distributed objects: Corba and RMI (mostly RMI). |