CWE-382 J2EE Bad Practices: Use of System.exit()

A J2EE application uses System.exit().

• Availability: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart — Access to a function that can shut down the application is an avenue for Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, since use of System.exit() also shuts down the application's container.

• [Architecture and Design] The shutdown function should be a privileged function available only to a properly authorized administrative user. • [Implementation] Web applications should not call methods that cause the virtual machine to exit, such as System.exit(). • [Implementation] Web applications should not throw any Throwables to the application server, as this may adversely affect the container. • [Implementation] Non-web applications may have a main() method that contains a System.exit(), but generally should not call System.exit() from other locations in the code.

• Automated Static Analysis: Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)