A security framework for reflective Java applications

The advent of component‐based reflective applications raises the issue of protecting baselevel components from the actions performed by metalevel components. However, by their very nature, reflective applications are far more difficult to secure than non‐reflective applications, which certainly explains why the problem has received very little attention so far. In this paper we present a security framework for enforcing access control between metalevel components and the baselevel components they reflect on. Rather than designing a new security architecture from scratch, we extend the standard security architecture of Java to provide security for a fully‐functional proxy‐based MOP for Java. We implement a number of well‐known meta‐level behaviors and study their security requirements, the results of which support our design choices. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.