Java Security, 2nd Edition

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is intended primarily for programmers who want to write secure Java applications. Much of the book is focused on various APIs within Java that provide security; we discuss how those APIs are used by a standard Java 2 Standard Edition implementation. This includes both how these APIs may be used from within your own application and how they may be used from within an applet that runs in the Java Plug-in. The Java Plug-in comes with all versions of the Java 2 platform and allows you to run applets in a virtual machine that is decoupled from the browser, which allows you to have full Java 2 support in most current browsers, from Internet Explorer (version 3 and higher) to Netscape Navigator (version 4 and higher) to Opera. In later versions of Navigator and Opera, the Plug-in is the only supported virtual machine. This is particularly important with respect to security since no browser supports the Java 2 security model in its embedded virtual machine.

For the end user or system administrator who is interested in Java security, this book will provide knowledge of the facilities provided by the basic Java platform and how those facilities are used by Java applications and applets within the Java Plug-in. We do not delve into the specific security features of Java-enabled browsers, although we do point out along the way which security features of Java are subject to change by the companies that provide Java-enabled browsers. Hence, end users and ...