can it execute programs on my computer ?
2 Answers
Only if either:
- You explicitly grant the applet increased rights (this also requires the applet to be cryptographically signed, which in theory allows you to find out who wrote it and sue them when it turns out to be damaging)
- Your JVM or Java browser plugin has a security hole that the applet exploits - unfortunately in recent years there has been a constant stream of such security holes being found.
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(You can cryptographically sign your jars with a completely made up certificate. The users will see a differently coloured dialog.) Feb 16, 2010 at 23:53
No. Java has a built in security mechanism will prevents applets from performing certain method calls. See the documentation for Runtime#exec(), for example.