Java Security & Java Vulnerability

Here are a few of the top methods used by hackers:

• Cross-site scripting (called XSS) allows hackers control of your website through user input, injecting malicious links and scripts on your website.
• Remote code execution (RCE) uses malware that a user accidentally installs, which enables a hacker to execute commands on a target device from any location. They can then launch a variety of attacks.
• SQL injections give hackers access to queryable information in your database.
• XPath injections use XPath queries to access XML data.
• LDAP injections allow hackers to add Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) queries into your user input forms to look up and change private information in your database.
• Command injections allow a hacker to provide foreign commands to your operating system.
• Buffer overflows are when hackers input more data than the buffer is meant to hold, which makes your application overwrite its other code, in which case they could force your app to write their input over your code, which leads to crashes, errors, and unwanted behaviors.

These Java security flaws and vulnerabilities put your customers and your entire business at risk. Hackers can leverage these weaknesses to steal information from your customers, compromise your database, disrupt your user experiences, or delete your applications.

An example RCE attack is the log4Shell vulnerability, which affected the Java logging framework log4j and allowed attackers to execute commands on a target device. In 2024, OpenJDK Vulnerability Advisory reported seven vulnerabilities with high severity, seven vulnerabilities with medium severity, and 18 vulnerabilities with low severity, with a total of 32 vulnerabilities reported. Even vulnerabilities with low severity can put an organization at risk. For more information, see Consideration 3: Timely Release of Security Patches in 8 Considerations Before You Renew Your Oracle Java License.

Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) is a method that integrates security measures directly into your DevOps workflow. Security is considered from the outset and is being addressed through every stage of the software development lifecycle. DevSecOps often includes embracing automated tools for security testing, analyzing code, and continuously scanning for vulnerabilities. Likewise, you employ continuous monitoring and incident-response techniques to promptly address and mitigate all vulnerabilities.

Penetration Testing (often called a pen test) involves attacking your own software in a controlled environment to find and resolve or mitigate vulnerabilities before a hacker can. Organizations should test the security of some key aspects of their software environment:

• Web Applications: Identify vulnerabilities in your software using methods like SQL injection, XSS, and insecure configurations.
• Mobile Applications: Focus on the vulnerabilities of mobile applications, which includes exploiting issues due to data storage limitations, encryption, and cell-phone communication.
• Networking: Test your internal and external networking by attempting to bypass your firewalls, routers, or other forms of intrusion detection. Also, look for weak encryption protocols and unauthorized access points for your wireless network.
• Cloud: Test the security of your cloud environment, which can include exploiting configurations, access control, and data protection.

Cloud Security is an important focal area for businesses to ensure they are protected from any security vulnerabilities or threats in their cloud components. Organizations should regularly update their technology systems, adopt vulnerability-management tooling, called Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE) tools, adopt security throughout their company culture, and regularly reevaluate the security of all your systems.

How does Azul Intelligence Cloud (IC) help you maintain security in your Java development environment? IC features a key set of capabilities called Azul Vulnerability Detection (AVD), which helps you detect vulnerable code that’s being actively used in production. Because it checks for code that’s being used at the class level, it can provide a far more accurate assessment of whether your code is vulnerable than other tools, thereby eliminating false positives and making your team more efficient at remediating vulnerabilities. There are three key elements of Vulnerability Protection:

• Eliminate vulnerability false positives by monitoring code that’s executed by the Java runtime while in production. Most tools check for vulnerabilities at the jar level, which can result in teams wasting time investigating far too many false positives. By comparison AVD checks for vulnerabilities at the class level, eliminating the majority of false positives. Additionally, AVD collects data when the code runs in production, rather than most tools which collect data when code is exercised during the CI/CD process, thus. providing you far more accurate results.
• Real-time and historical analysis provides an analysis that shows you exactly where the vulnerable code is, to help reduce your issue backlogs. IC AVD retains your component and code-use history, then determines if vulnerable code was exploited before it was a known vulnerability.
• Helps you triage new vulnerabilities to ensure all vulnerabilities are added to the CVE knowledge base to enable your DevOps team to immediately identify all vulnerabilities that are in production.
• No performance penalty is incurred, which is common with other application security tools. IC AVD’s runtime data is collected without inflicting performance penalties on your running applications.
• Detects all your Java apps whether you built it, bought it, or are introducing a regression with a recent change. This includes frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, Tomcat, Quarkus, Micronaut, Kafka, Cassandra, Elasticsearch, Spark, Hive, Hadoop, and more.

For more information, see the Vulnerability Detection feature set of Azul Intelligence Cloud.

How does Azul Platform Core help meet your security needs and protect your application from vulnerabilities? Platform Core helps protect you from vulnerabilities in a few different ways:

• Quarterly Critical Patch Updates: Timely updates patch vulnerabilities and are delivered on a strict SLA, securing your Java applications.
• Out-of-cycle updates address zero-day vulnerabilities and critical functional regression issues.
• Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) management includes a list of CVEs fixed in Azul’s OpenJDK builds, which allows you to track and understand all the security improvements made over time. See Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.
• OpenJDK Vulnerability Group: Azul coordinates with the group to identify, prioritize, and address the vulnerabilities as quickly and securely as possible.

For more information about how Azul can protect your application from Java security vulnerabilities, see Azul Intelligence Cloud and Azul Platform Core.