Discovering anomalies in access modifiers in Java with a formal specification

Abstract

The Java programming language provides three access modifiers to control the visibility of the members of a class. Though identifying the weaknesses of the access modifiers from the informal semantics stated in the language manual is difficult, this does not mean that the access modifiers provide a sound ground for building secure programs. A rigorous study of the access modifiers with attribute grammars has uncovered several situations that are irregular or counterintuitive. These situations are confusing to programmers and may create weaknesses in Java programs.