The product violates the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) specification by using AWT/Swing.
The Enterprise JavaBeans specification requires that every bean provider follow a set of programming guidelines designed to ensure that the bean will be portable and behave consistently in any EJB container. In this case, the product violates the following EJB guideline: "An enterprise bean must not use the AWT functionality to attempt to output information to a display, or to input information from a keyboard." The specification justifies this requirement in the following way: "Most servers do not allow direct interaction between an application program and a keyboard/display attached to the server system."

Primary

Implementation

Other
Quality Degradation

Architecture and Design
Do not use AWT/Swing when writing EJBs.

The following Java example is a simple converter class for converting US dollars to Yen. This converter class demonstrates the improper practice of using a stateless session Enterprise JavaBean that implements an AWT Component and AWT keyboard event listener to retrieve keyboard input from the user for the amount of the US dollars to convert to Yen.

@Statelesspublic class ConverterSessionBean extends Component implements KeyListener, ConverterSessionRemote {

/* member variables for receiving keyboard input using AWT API */

...private StringBuffer enteredText = new StringBuffer();

/* conversion rate on US dollars to Yen */

private BigDecimal yenRate = new BigDecimal("115.3100");
public ConverterSessionBean() {
super();
/* method calls for setting up AWT Component for receiving keyboard input */

...addKeyListener(this);
}
public BigDecimal dollarToYen(BigDecimal dollars) {BigDecimal result = dollars.multiply(yenRate);return result.setScale(2, BigDecimal.ROUND_DOWN);}

/* member functions for implementing AWT KeyListener interface */

public void keyTyped(KeyEvent event) {...}
public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) {}
public void keyReleased(KeyEvent e) {}

/* member functions for receiving keyboard input and displaying output */

public void paint(Graphics g) {...}
...
}

This use of the AWT and Swing APIs within any kind of Enterprise JavaBean not only violates the restriction of the EJB specification against using AWT or Swing within an EJB but also violates the intended use of Enterprise JavaBeans to separate business logic from presentation logic.
The Stateless Session Enterprise JavaBean should contain only business logic. Presentation logic should be provided by some other mechanism such as Servlets or Java Server Pages (JSP) as in the following Java/JSP example.

@Statelesspublic class ConverterSessionBean implements ConverterSessionRemoteInterface {

/* conversion rate on US dollars to Yen */
private BigDecimal yenRate = new BigDecimal("115.3100");
public ConverterSessionBean() {}

/* remote method to convert US dollars to Yen */

public BigDecimal dollarToYen(BigDecimal dollars) {BigDecimal result = dollars.multiply(yenRate);return result.setScale(2, BigDecimal.ROUND_DOWN);}
}

<%@ page import="converter.ejb.Converter, java.math.*, javax.naming.*"%><%!
private Converter converter = null;public void jspInit() {try {InitialContext ic = new InitialContext();converter = (Converter) ic.lookup(Converter.class.getName());} catch (Exception ex) {System.out.println("Couldn't create converter bean."+ ex.getMessage());}}public void jspDestroy() {converter = null;}

%><html>
<head><title>Converter</title></head><body bgcolor="white">
<h1>Converter</h1><hr><p>Enter an amount to convert:</p><form method="get"><input type="text" name="amount" size="25"><br><p><input type="submit" value="Submit"><input type="reset" value="Reset"></form><%String amount = request.getParameter("amount");if ( amount != null && amount.length() > 0 ) {BigDecimal d = new BigDecimal(amount);BigDecimal yenAmount = converter.dollarToYen(d);

%><p><%= amount %> dollars are <%= yenAmount %> Yen.<p><%}
%>
</body>
</html>

SFP3
Use of an improper API

Allowed
This CWE entry is at the Variant level of abstraction, which is a preferred level of abstraction for mapping to the root causes of vulnerabilities.
Carefully read both the name and description to ensure that this mapping is an appropriate fit. Do not try to 'force' a mapping to a lower-level Base/Variant simply to comply with this preferred level of abstraction.

CWE Community
2006-12-15
Draft 5
2006-12-15
Submitted by members of the CWE community to extend early CWE versions

Eric Dalci
Cigital
2008-07-01
updated Potential_Mitigations, Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2008-09-08
updated Relationships, Other_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2009-10-29
updated Description, Other_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2009-12-28
updated Demonstrative_Examples, Potential_Mitigations

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-01
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2011-06-27
updated Common_Consequences

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2012-05-11
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2014-07-30
updated Relationships, Taxonomy_Mappings

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2020-02-24
updated Relationships

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-01-31
updated Description

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-04-27
updated Relationships, Time_of_Introduction

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2023-06-29
updated Mapping_Notes

CWE Content Team
MITRE
2025-12-11
4.19
2025-12-11
updated Weakness_Ordinalities