The JavaTM Tutorial

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Trail: JDK(TM) 1.1 -- And Beyond!
Lesson: A Preview of Things to Come

## Security Enhancements

> This release introduces three new major security enhancements:
> - Policy-based, easily-configurable, fine-grained access control.
>   When code is loaded, it is assigned "permissions" based on the security policy currently in effect. Each permission specifies a permitted access to a particular resource (such as "read" and "write" access to a specified file or directory, "connect" access to a given host and port, etc.). The policy, specifying which permissions are available for code from various signers/locations, can be initialized from an external configurable policy file. Unless a permission is explicitly granted to code, it cannot access the resource that is guarded by that permission. These new concepts of permission and policy enable the JDK to offer fine-grain, highly configurable, flexible, and extensible access control. Such access control can now not only be specified for applets, but also for all Java code, including applications, Beans, and servlets.

> - Certificates
>   JDK 1.1 includes certificate interfaces for parsing and managing certificates and X.509 v3 implementation of the certificate interfaces.

> - Three new tools
>   `keytool` is used to create public/private keys; to display, import, and export certificates; and to generate X.509 v1 self-signed certificates.
>   `jarsigner` signs JAR (Java Archive Format) files, and verifies the signature(s) of signed JAR files.
>   `policytool` creates and modifies the external policy configuration files that define your installation's Java security policy.

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