In message <9510091958.AA23589@sulphur.osf.org>, Rich Salz writes:
As far as I know Java apps can only make network connections to the IP address they were loaded from.
What part of the state of my machine can they access and send out to the "home port"? Can they read /etc/passwd, make NIS requests, etc?
As far as I know Java Applets either can't do file I/O, or can only do it in a small area of the file namespace that you set aside for it (like ~/java-data). I don't recall any classes that let you make local NIS requests. (however this does imply that if you set up a Java Applet writable area so that you can use the nifty Java rolodex, that other Java applets could damage that data or send copies to "home base" - I don't know if there is any finer-grained access, and I havn't yet been able to do more then _read_ all the Java docs from Sun. All thery, no experiance.)