On Tue, 23 Jan 1996, Rich Salz wrote: Have you implemented this? If so, I'd be interested to hear how; It doesn't sound feasible.
Now suppose, I fake a compiler (or I have a malicious compiler) and I generate by hand malicious byte code such that in the symbol tables, tricky_pointer and data have the same offset.
Symbol tables in java class files don't have offsets - they consist of a list of class_ids, names, and types. Offsets into the class object are theoretically generated at run time, and are purely internal to the virtual machine. The only way to get at the offsets is through the _quick variants, which are not real java instructions, but placeholders inserted by the Sun classloader after offsets have been calculated. If the class verifier can be made to allow _quick instructions through, security disappears - this is checked for- a hole in this code would be huge. Simon