The product violates the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) specification by using sockets.
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 attempt to listen on a socket, accept connections on a socket, or use a socket for multicast." The specification justifies this requirement in the following way: "The EJB architecture allows an enterprise bean instance to be a network socket client, but it does not allow it to be a network server. Allowing the instance to become a network server would conflict with the basic function of the enterprise bean-- to serve the EJB clients."

Primary

Implementation

Other
Quality Degradation

Architecture and Design
Implementation
Do not use Sockets when writing EJBs.

The following Java example is a simple stateless Enterprise JavaBean that retrieves stock symbols and stock values. The Enterprise JavaBean creates a socket and listens for and accepts connections from clients on the socket.

@Statelesspublic class StockSymbolBean implements StockSymbolRemote {

ServerSocket serverSocket = null;Socket clientSocket = null;
public StockSymbolBean() {
try {serverSocket = new ServerSocket(Constants.SOCKET_PORT);} catch (IOException ex) {...}
try {clientSocket = serverSocket.accept();} catch (IOException e) {...}
}
public String getStockSymbol(String name) {...}
public BigDecimal getStockValue(String symbol) {...}
private void processClientInputFromSocket() {...}
}

And the following Java example is similar to the previous example but demonstrates the use of multicast socket connections within an Enterprise JavaBean.

@Statelesspublic class StockSymbolBean extends Thread implements StockSymbolRemote {

ServerSocket serverSocket = null;Socket clientSocket = null;boolean listening = false;
public StockSymbolBean() {
try {serverSocket = new ServerSocket(Constants.SOCKET_PORT);} catch (IOException ex) {...}
listening = true;while(listening) {start();}
}
public String getStockSymbol(String name) {...}
public BigDecimal getStockValue(String symbol) {...}
public void run() {try {clientSocket = serverSocket.accept();} catch (IOException e) {...}...}

}

The previous two examples within any type of Enterprise JavaBean violate the EJB specification by attempting to listen on a socket, accepting connections on a socket, or using a socket for multicast.

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