Re: Corsaire White Paper: Assessing Java Clients with the BeanShell

[Stephen de Vries <stephen () corsaire com>]

On 20 Aug 2006, at 03:33, Matthew Franz wrote:

> Very cool article, but since BeanShell is basically Java (and Java  
> is a horrible scripting language for a whole lot of obvious  
> reasons) IMHO this sort of mayhem is better conducted in something  
> like JRuby or Jython or even Groovy ( http://groovy.codehaus.org/)  
> if one doesn't already know with Ruby or Python.
>
> All of Java Scripting languages should provide the same sort of  
> functionality in terms of inspecting objects, embedding  
> interpreters, etc.

Yes, all the scripting languages should provide similar  
functionality.  The choice is mostly a matter of personal preference,  
the reasons I chose the BeanShell in this case were:

- It's mature, has been around for a while and is easy to integrate
- If you already know Java (which is a lot of people), then you'll  
understand the BeanShell without having to learn another language.
- BeanShell 2.0 is fully Java compatible (all Java code is also valid  
BeanShell scripts), but also supports scripting language features  
such as loose typing.

We can only expect even more languages to choose from once JSE 6.0  
(with official scripting language support via JSR 223) becomes popular.


regards,

Stephen



> - mdf
>
> --
> Matthew Franz
> http://www.threatmind.net/
>
>
> On 8/18/06, Stephen de Vries < stephen () corsaire com> wrote:
> http://www.corsaire.com/white-papers/060816-assessing-java-clients-
> with-the-beanshell.pdf
> Assessing the security of Java applications, and particularly client-
> server applications, can be a tedious process of modifying the code,
> compiling, deploying, testing and repeat. This becomes even more
> difficult when the source code to the application is not available.
> What security testers require is an easy means of interacting with
> the internals of a Java application during execution without
> recompiling the code.
>
> The BeanShell (http://www.beanshell.org) provides an interpreted,
> scripting environment that can plug in to any Java application or
> applet and allows users to inspect and manipulate objects
> dynamically. This paper demonstrates a technique for using the
> BeanShell to assess the security of a typical Java client-server
> application.
>
>
>
> --
> Stephen de Vries
> Corsaire Ltd
> E-mail: stephen () corsaire com
> Tel:    +44 1483 226014
> Fax:    +44 1483 226068
> Web:    http://www.corsaire.com
>
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--
Stephen de Vries
Corsaire Ltd
E-mail: stephen () corsaire com
Tel:    +44 1483 226014
Fax:    +44 1483 226068
Web:    http://www.corsaire.com





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