CWE-492: Use of Inner Class Containing Sensitive Data

VariantDraftExploit Likelihood: Medium

Inner classes are translated into classes that are accessible at package scope and may expose code that the programmer intended to keep private to attackers.

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Extended Description

Inner classes quietly introduce several security concerns because of the way they are translated into Java bytecode. In Java source code, it appears that an inner class can be declared to be accessible only by the enclosing class, but Java bytecode has no concept of an inner class, so the compiler must transform an inner class declaration into a peer class with package level access to the original outer class. More insidiously, since an inner class can access private fields in its enclosing class, once an inner class becomes a peer class in bytecode, the compiler converts private fields accessed by the inner class into protected fields.

Technical Details

Structure
Simple

Applicable To

Languages
Java
Platforms

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