Bug 57281

There is a report on StackOverflow that Spring Boot (1.1.6) application fails on Tomcat 7.0.52 when running with SecurityManager enabled.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27189047/springboot-webapp-under-java-securitymanager-throws-exceptions-when-granted-allp

The error is
[[[
java.lang.IllegalAccessException: Class org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil$1 can not access a member of class org.springframework.boot.context.web.ErrorPageFilter with modifiers "public"
    at sun.reflect.Reflection.ensureMemberAccess(Reflection.java:109) ~[na:1.7.0_65]
    at java.lang.reflect.AccessibleObject.slowCheckMemberAccess(AccessibleObject.java:261) ~[na:1.7.0_65]
    at java.lang.reflect.AccessibleObject.checkAccess(AccessibleObject.java:253) ~[na:1.7.0_65]
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:599) ~[na:1.7.0_65]
    at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil$1.run(SecurityUtil.java:277) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil$1.run(SecurityUtil.java:274) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) ~[na:1.7.0_65]
    at javax.security.auth.Subject.doAsPrivileged(Subject.java:536) ~[na:1.7.0_65]
    at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil.execute(SecurityUtil.java:309) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.security.SecurityUtil.doAsPrivilege(SecurityUtil.java:249) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:237) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.access$000(ApplicationFilterChain.java:55) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain$1.run(ApplicationFilterChain.java:191) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain$1.run(ApplicationFilterChain.java:187) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) ~[na:1.7.0_65]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:186) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:220) ~[catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:122) [catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:501) [catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:170) [catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:98) [catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteIpValve.invoke(RemoteIpValve.java:683) [catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at ch.qos.logback.access.tomcat.LogbackValve.invoke(LogbackValve.java:178) [logback-access-1.0.13.jar:na]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:116) [catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:408) [catalina.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1040) [tomcat-coyote.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:607) [tomcat-coyote.jar:7.0.52]
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:313) [tomcat-coyote.jar:7.0.52]
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145) [na:1.7.0_65]
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615) [na:1.7.0_65]
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) [na:1.7.0_65]
]]]

Looking at the current sources of Spring Boot, the org.springframework.boot.context.web.ErrorPageFilter class is not public, but package-visible. Reflection call fails, as Java Language rules prohibit access to that class.

Such filter cannot be configured via web.xml (as its constructor is not accessible), but can be configured programmatically via ServletContext.addFilter(String, Filter). It is a rare situation, but I think that it is a valid one.

My idea of the fix is that method lookup in catalina SecurityUtil shall not use targetObject.getClass().getMethod(..), but Filter.class.getMethod(). My expectation is that it will be allowed to invoke java.lang.reflect.Method declared by javax.servlet.Filter class on the targetObject object regardless of accessibility of targetObject class, but testing is needed.

A bonus point is that the method cache shall become smaller.