Abstract

A language is type-safe if the only operations that can be performed on data in the language are those sanctioned by the type of the data. Java is not type-safe, though it was intended to be. A Java object may read and modify fields (and invoke methods) private to another object. It may read and modify internal Java Virtual Machine (JVM) data-structures. It may invoke operations not even defined for that object, causing completely unpredictable results, including JVM crashes (core dumps). Thus Java security, which depends strongly on type-safety, is completely compromised.

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