This page contains adhoc TODO ideas or topics being currently investigated. Please feel free to comment on these or suggest new ones.

Possible Changes to Current Guidelines

• All classes, methods will need to include the final keyword. Although this is against extensibility, it is critical from the security point of view.

• All file separators must be replaced by platform independent File.separator

• Possibly use the memento design pattern with deserialization. An inner class performs input validation using 'safe' objects, for example, {{long}} to store {{int}} vals and then updates the state of the actual outer class and so on..., Item 50 \[Daconta 03\]

• readResolve() for deserialization (singletons). Do not serialize sensitive external mutable variables (best to declare them transient)

• Calling clone.super() is necessary.

Possible Recommendations

• Careful while using environment variables - investigate usual conditions

• Use HttpSession carefully, Item 25 \[Daconta 03\]

• For good portability, do not make the assumption - all DBMSs can tolerate several open ResultSet Objects at a time, Item 41 \[Daconta 03\]

• Thread.interrupted issues

• Java encoding issues

• Prefer composition over inheritance

• Avoid flaws in interfaces

• Naming conventions

• Check nonpublic method's params using assertions rather than normal checks

• Create defensive copies of method params

• Prefer interfaces to abstract classes

• Prefer interfaces to Reflection (methods)

• Failure Atomicity (exceptions should not leave object state inconsistent)

• Avoid ThreadGroup APIs (covered)

• Masking, Shadowing, Obscuration

Possible Rules

• Do not catch Error

• Avoid using Reflection to instantiate inner classes

• Use a typesafe enum pattern \[Bloch, Item 20\]- (_enum type_ provided, jdk 1.5 onwards, [Docs|http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/enums.html])

• Some of the anti-patterns described in EXC00-J. Handle exceptions appropriately

• Do not hardcode sensitive information (covered)

• compareTo() contract violations like natural ordering that is not consistent with equals

• Don't catch Throwable without checking for ThreadDeath.

• Usage of {{GetResource}} may be unsafe if class is extended \[Findbugs\]

• Do not serialize/deserialize resource handles

• Do not sign encrypted data (SignedObject should be first, followed by SealedObject)