Java Platform, Standard Edition
Java Remote Method Invocation API Guide
Release 9
E87687-01
September 2017
Overview
Java Remote Method Invocation (Java RMI), lets you, the developer, to create
distributed applications in Java.
RMI allows an object to invoke methods of remote Java objects running on another
Java Virtual Machine (JVM), possibly on different hosts. RMI uses object serialization
to marshal and unmarshal parameters, and doesn’t truncate types, supporting true
object-oriented polymorphism.
RMI Security Recommendations
Follow these recommendations to improve the security of your RMI applications:
• Follow Secure Coding Guidelines for Java SE.
• Ensure that you run a security manager when using RMI, either on a client or
server. See The Security Manager.
• Establish a reasonable security policy. For example, grant SocketPermission and
allow listen, accept, connect, and resolve actions only among hosts
communicating with RMI. Don't have the security policy grant AllPermission. See
Permissions in the Java Development Kit and Default Policy Implementation and
Policy File Syntax.
• Restrict the communication to be local if RMI is being used only for communication
among JVMs on the local host. To accomplish this task, specify the appropriate
socket permissions in the security policy file. Alternatively, you can use RMI APIs
directly to restrict connections only to the local host. See the RMISocketFactory
class.
• Ensure that the value of the [Link] property is True. By
default, the [Link] property is set to True. If you set this
property to False, then remote code loading is enabled, which increases the level
of security risk to the system.
• Run RMI over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) and
request authentication for both server and client. This is possible using custom
1
socket factories. An application can export a remote object to use custom socket
factories that create sockets of a desired type (for example, SSL sockets). Using
this technique, an application can use SSL socket communication instead of the
default socket communication. See the following:
– SslRMIClientSocketFactory class
– SslRMIServerSocketFactory class
– Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) Reference
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Java Platform, Standard Edition Java Remote Method Invocation API Guide, Release 9
E87687-01
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