J2EE Bad Practices: Direct Use of Sockets
The J2EE application directly uses sockets instead of using framework method calls.
Description
The J2EE standard permits the use of sockets only for the purpose of communication with legacy systems when no higher-level protocol is available. Authoring your own communication protocol requires wrestling with difficult security issues.
Without significant scrutiny by a security expert, chances are good that a custom communication protocol will suffer from security problems. Many of the same issues apply to a custom implementation of a standard protocol. While there are usually more resources available that address security concerns related to implementing a standard protocol, these resources are also available to attackers.
Demonstrations
The following examples help to illustrate the nature of this weakness and describe methods or techniques which can be used to mitigate the risk.
Note that the examples here are by no means exhaustive and any given weakness may have many subtle varieties, each of which may require different detection methods or runtime controls.
Example One
The following example opens a socket to connect to a remote server.
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
// Perform servlet tasks.
...
// Open a socket to a remote server (bad).
Socket sock = null;
try {
sock = new Socket(remoteHostname, 3000);
// Do something with the socket.
...
} catch (Exception e) {
...
}
}A Socket object is created directly within the Java servlet, which is a dangerous way to manage remote connections.
See Also
Weaknesses in this category are related to poor coding practices.
This category identifies Software Fault Patterns (SFPs) within the Use of an Improper API cluster (SFP3).
This category represents one of the phyla in the Seven Pernicious Kingdoms vulnerability classification. It includes weaknesses that involve the software using an API ...
This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.
This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.
This view (slice) covers issues that are found in Java programs that are not common to all languages.
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