code from privileged sources executed with restricted permissions

[Simon Kornblith]

When executing a Java applet or calling Java directly from Firefox chrome:// code (e.g., Firefox extensions), the code should be granted AllPermissions. Given that chrome:// code has shell execution privileges, this is not a security hole. Permissions are handled properly by the Sun NPRuntime Java plug-in, and were handled mostly properly by the old OJI/LiveConnect plug-in.

Running the following from a Firefox overlay:

new java.net.URLClassLoader(java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance(java.lang.Class.forName("java.net.URL"), 0));

produces the following error in icedtea6-plugin-6b18-1.8-0ubuntu1

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
 at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:57)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
 at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:532)
 at sun.applet.PluginAppletSecurityContext$6.run(PluginAppletSecurityContext.java:1050)
 at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
 at sun.applet.PluginAppletSecurityContext.handleMessage(PluginAppletSecurityContext.java:1047)
 at sun.applet.AppletSecurityContextManager.handleMessage(AppletSecurityContextManager.java:69)
 at sun.applet.PluginStreamHandler.handleMessage(PluginStreamHandler.java:273)
 at sun.applet.PluginMessageHandlerWorker.run(PluginMessageHandlerWorker.java:82)
Caused by: java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.lang.RuntimePermission createClassLoader)
 at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(AccessControlContext.java:342)
 at java.security.AccessController.checkPermission(AccessController.java:553)
 at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkPermission(SecurityManager.java:549)
 at net.sourceforge.jnlp.runtime.JNLPSecurityManager.checkPermission(JNLPSecurityManager.java:282)
 at java.lang.SecurityManager.checkCreateClassLoader(SecurityManager.java:611)
 at java.lang.ClassLoader.checkCreateClassLoader(ClassLoader.java:194)
 at java.lang.ClassLoader.<init>(ClassLoader.java:243)
 at java.security.SecureClassLoader.<init>(SecureClassLoader.java:94)
 at java.net.URLClassLoader.<init>(URLClassLoader.java:130)
 ... 10 more
Error on Java side: LiveConnectPermissionNeeded access denied (java.lang.RuntimePermission createClassLoader)

This same code executes without a hitch in the sun-java6-plugin-6.20dlj-1ubuntu3. This is currently preventing the Zotero OpenOffice plug-in from working on a default Ubuntu installation.

[Bruce D'Arcus (bdarcus)]

This bug was reported more than six months ago, and I ran into it myself yesterday when doing a fresh ubuntu reinstall. Any chance someone can comment?