How to "jail" Java applications in OS X?

Is it possible to "jail" Java applications?

My bank has an applet that requests "unrestricted access" to my computer. That makes me feels very uneasy.

There should be a way to tell the java runtime that my system's root directory is something like /Users/myuser/javajail , and that would be all that java could access.

Solution 1:

You could fake this by creating an account Jail with the minimum of rights and then running Safari with

su Jail -c /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari 

When you need to access your bank.

Another option is to go to the Java Preferences and activate the Java Console. You can then poke around at what class there are and then write a policy file that jails that applet. Not sure how easy this would be. Your best bet would be to make the policy system wide in the current JVM by installing within the classpath under /Library/Java/Home