webapp classloader ProtectionDomain (running secured tomcat)

[Vladimir Grishchenko <VG...@SERENA.com>]

Hi all,

It seems that webapp classloader puts all classes loaded from
a webapp directory into the same ProtectionDomain regardless
of the location where the class was loaded from (like classes
dir or a jar file). It means that any security grant entry granting
permssions to a webapp codesource effectively grants the same set
of permissions to each and every class in web application. This
is probably fine in most cases but leaves no possibility to fine
tune security within web-application. My particular problem is
that I'm trying to use JAAS to enable access control with custom
JAAS policy implementation. CodeSOurce partitioning that Sun
suggests requires that the code sensitive to user-based
 operations shoud be put into separate ProtectionDomain for JAAS
mechanisms to work. The only way to do this with Tomcat is to put
classes someplace out of webapp directory, so they don't inherit
any permissions assigned to webapp ProtectionDomain. I think that
webapp class loader should put classes loaded from class directory
and every jar file into diffrent protection domains, like class
loaders that load classes from the system classpath in Java.

Well, if all that makes any sense to you may be there's something
I'm missing here?
Just wanted to get other people's opinions...

--Vlad.


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