Java Security Best Practices To Protect Your Application

Java is a popular programming language, and many applications are based on Java in today’s world. Now because so many applications are based on it, it’s crucial to ensure the security of these applications. There are some best practices.

In this article, we’ll explore some Java security best practices that can help organizations secure their applications based on Java. But before jumping into the best practices, let’s understand Java security first.

What is Java Security?

Java Security has three parts— tools, APIs, and libraries of the most common security algorithms, mechanisms, and protocols. The Java security APIs have several layers, including cryptography, public key infrastructure, secure communication, authentication, and access control.

While Java security comes with its comprehensive security framework, some of its security features need to be enabled by the developers. Also, Java is inherently stronger than most other programming languages because of its strong data typing and other built-in security features. Further, the JDK maintainers regularly release updates to make it more secure.

Now it's time to uncover some of the best practices that can help you secure your Java applications.

Java Security Best Practices

By using some best practices, you can constantly improve the results. Here are some of the best Java security practices that can help you secure your Java-based application.

Use Tried and Tested Libraries

A large part of the code in Java-based applications uses open-source libraries, and with open-source libraries come vulnerabilities. While some vulnerabilities can easily be traced and fixed, some are transitive and can’t be traced easily.

Organizations should trust only the libraries that are completely secure to use. The best idea here is to check if the library has any known vulnerabilities or requires any fixes.

Avoid Serialization

Serialization is the process of inputting commands and transforming them into endowed objects. It dispenses with constructors and access modifiers, and as a result, it allows for a stream of anonymous data to become running code in the JVM. This makes Java serialization very deeply and inherently insecure.

The best idea to prevent this is to avoid serialization/deserialization in the Java codebase. Instead, you can use a serialization format like JSON and YAML.

Leverage OpenID Connect with 2FA

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With the help of libraries like Spring Security, setting up OpenID becomes a breeze. However, ensure that your application uses either 2FA (two-factor authentication) or MFA (multi-factor authentication) to strengthen your security system.

Sanitize Inputs

Validating external inputs is an essential part of using Java codes. The idea here is to sanitize all the inputs coming from untrusted sources before using them in the application. This way, you’ll be able to prevent potential attacks such as cross-site scripting (XSS) that could lead to serious security issues in the application.

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Protect Sensitive Data

Your application might be saving vital data of your users, like credit card details and more. Exposing such personal data can be very dangerous for you and your users.

To prevent any mishaps with the stored sensitive data, you must carefully scrutinize your application’s design and decide if you really need to store sensitive data. Also, if you need to store it, you must ensure that you are not exposing it unknowingly.

The easiest way to avoid storing sensitive data in your database is by sanitizing your domain entities' toString() methods. This will prevent your application from printing sensitive fields accidentally. Also, if you use Lombok to generate your toString() method, you can use @ToString.Exclude to avoid a field from being a part of toString() output.

Prevent Code Injection

Code injection, also known as Remote Code Execution (RCE) is a very common type of cyber attack that involves injecting malicious codes into a codebase, so it can be executed within the application setting. In most cases, this results in a hasty takeover as the injected code affect the running application. There is plenty of ways through which cybercriminals can inject malicious code into an application. For example, attackers can add specially created data files, modify cookies, and more.

The best way to prevent this from happening is by ensuring that there’s no executable user input in the codebase. All the users need to be sanitized before adding anything to the codebase so that only legit people are involved in the process.

Another way to avoid code injection is by treating all the involved people as untrusted. Also, as a practice, you should never place untrusted data on your command line while building a new process. Also, it is suggested to pass any data to new processes as encoded arguments in an inherited channel or temporary files. This is because APIs like javax.script can run scripts with untrusted executable code.

Encrypt the Data

If your application needs to store sensitive data, you need to ensure that the data doesn’t get exposed and land in the wrong hands. This is where encrypting your data helps. First, you must decide what kind of encryption you need— symmetric or asymmetric.

Also, you’ll need to decide how secure your data needs. This is because stronger encryption takes more time and consumes more CPU. However, the best part is you don’t need to implement the encryption system yourself. Some trusted libraries can do the job for you.

For example, if you need to encrypt sensitive data like credit card numbers, you’ll need a symmetric algorithm. This is because you’ll need to be able to retrieve the original numbers. You need to use Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for US federal organizations to encrypt such data. Now to encrypt the data, you can pick a trusted library like Google Tink to do the encryption for you.

Here’s an example of how to use Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) with AES. This will allow you to encrypt plain text and provide associated data that needs to be authenticated and not encrypted.

If your application needs to save passwords, you must also ensure the security of the passwords. There helps using robust cryptographic hashtag algorithms because you won’t need to retrieve the original passwords but match the hashes only. The best algorithm for hashing passwords is Argon2 and BCrypt. For legacy systems, an algorithm can Scrypt can also be used to some extent.

Use Prepared Statements to Handle SQL Parameters

Whenever you create an SQL statement, you risk interpolation of a fragment of executable code. That’s why it’s crucial to use java.sql.PreparedStatement class to create SQL. Similar facilities are also available for NoSQL stores like MongoDB. Also, if you’re using an ORM layer, the implementation will use PreparedStatements for you in the internal workings.

Update all the Security Releases

Oracle has its licensing scheme and release schedule for Java. While the new release cadence doesn’t ease things for developers, it is vital for them to regularly check for updates and apply them to their JRE and JDK.

So ensure you’re regularly updating for critical patches and checking the Oracle homepage for security updates. At this time, Oracle delivers an automated patch update for the current long-term-support release of Java. The only issue here is that the patch is only available for paying customers of Java support licenses.

How Can Scantist Ensure Java Security?

We all know that open-source components have become an inevitable part of the majority of today’s applications. However, as aforementioned, open-source components can come with vulnerabilities and security issues. To prevent any unforeseen open-source vulnerabilities, you must ensure that you’re fully prepared for them.

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To Conclude

Java is a very popular programming language, and the majority of developers use Java to build applications. However, because of its growing popularity, cybercriminals have also started to target Java-based applications. Now, if you let the attackers find any loophole, it could be easily used to exploit the application.

With the above-mentioned Java safety tips, you can minimize the chances of attacks as much as possible and ensure the security of your applications.