Java security: If you ain’t cheatin,’ you ain’t tryin’

Most industries have rules of engagement. In sports, there are referees. In business, there are regulations. In government, there are Robert’s Rules of Order. Cybersecurity is different. There are regulations, but they don’t limit how much we can defend ourselves. They focus on compliance, breach reporting, and risk management, not on dictating the strategies we use to stop attackers. Meanwhile, attackers have no such constraints.

Sure, there are laws against hacking, but the rules of engagement don’t matter if your opponents toss the rule book out and rig the game. Attackers have no code of conduct telling them they can’t automate reconnaissance, exploit zero-days, or attack critical systems at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning. They don’t wait for compliance checks or budget approvals. They don’t play by the same rules we do, and they certainly aren’t waiting for defenders to catch up.

That’s the problem with the cybersecurity arms race — it’s a cycle that keeps reactive defenders one step behind active attackers. Detect, develop patch, deploy patch, repeat. We’re always addressing the last threat while attackers move on to the next one. Even red teams, whose job is to find vulnerabilities before attackers do, must play by the rules. There are certain business functions they simply aren’t allowed to interfere with.

Instead of reacting, defenders need to seize the initiative — to get ahead of the game and break the cycle. That means finding ways to cheat — stacking the deck in our favor with solutions that neutralize threats before they can be exploited.

The cybersecurity arms race is a rigged game

In cybersecurity, defenders have to be right 100% of the time, while attackers only need to get lucky once. That’s what makes defending Java applications such a daunting task. Java is the backbone of financial services, enterprise applications, and government infrastructure. It’s a massive attack surface with numerous avenues to open-source libraries. We can’t afford to secure such a complex system reactively.

Yet that’s exactly what most organizations do. Their security stack is built for a different era, a system of firewalls, WAFs, and endpoint detection that protects the perimeter while attackers slip through the cracks. Vulnerabilities exist in software dependencies, misconfigurations, and runtime behavior — things that traditional defenses were never designed to handle. Attackers don’t need to break through the front door if they can climb in through a window.

No real-world event exemplifies this better than the Log4j fiasco. When the Log4Shell vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) was disclosed, security teams scrambled to patch it, knowing that delay meant exposure to mass exploitation. But patching takes time. Security teams had to test for compatibility, wait for scheduled downtime, and ensure business continuity. In the first week alone, there were over 840,000 exploit attempts recorded in the wild.

For attackers, Log4Shell was a gift — a free shot at thousands of unpatched, vulnerable systems. They didn’t have to wait for teams to patch. They didn’t have to deal with red tape. They just acted.

That’s why defenders need a new approach. The goal isn’t just to patch faster — it’s to stop playing by a rulebook that attackers have been ignoring for decades.

The best defenders steal the attacker’s playbook

Attackers don’t just look for known vulnerabilities. They look for opportunities — weak points in execution, dependencies, memory handling, and logic flaws. They take advantage of the fact that many security solutions are designed for detection rather than prevention.

The best defense isn’t just building a bigger wall — it’s changing the battlefield entirely. Attackers assume they’ll find a weakness because most defenses only react once something bad happens. What happens when they hit an environment where exploits fail before they even start?

By shifting from a reactive to an active security posture, defenders can dictate the terms of engagement, making it significantly more challenging for attackers to succeed.

Cybercriminals automate everything — scanning for weaknesses, testing exploits, even launching entire attack campaigns — because they know manual defenses are too slow to stop them. Defenders should be doing the same. And no, that doesn’t mean only adopting AI-powered security tools that try to “predict” attacks. A lot of security folks are (rightly) not comfortable allowing a fully autonomous system to make changes to their configuration without their knowledge. But automation doesn’t have to mean AI.

There’s a smarter way: immutable rules that neutralize vulnerabilities at runtime, before they can be exploited.

With the right security controls in place, an attacker might bypass a firewall, evade detection, and land inside an application. But once inside, they encounter a runtime environment that actively works against them — one that automatically neutralizes exploits, blocks malicious code execution, and prevents memory corruption attacks without requiring a patch, downtime, or human intervention. It’s not just an extra layer of defense. It’s a trap, designed to render an attacker’s efforts useless the moment they try to act.

Consider Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In the movie, the Enterprise is caught off guard because it assumes the approaching starship Reliant is friendly. Khan uses this false sense of security to launch a devastating attack before Kirk and his crew can react. Cyberattacks work the same way — appearing legitimate until it’s too late. Attackers don’t always smash through defenses; they slip in unnoticed, exploiting trust and expected behaviors. A malicious request might look like a routine API call, a small memory overwrite could trigger a full system compromise, and a dependency update could introduce an unnoticed backdoor. If defenders only react after something goes wrong, they’re playing Khan’s game — outmaneuvered before the real fight even begins. The key to winning isn’t just detecting the attack. It’s designing an environment where the attack itself never works.

Change the game before the game changes you

Java security has spent the past two decades playing defense — patching vulnerabilities, filtering input, monitoring for suspicious activity. It isn’t designed for modern threats.

By the time a patch is released, tested, and deployed, attackers have already weaponized the vulnerability. Firewalls and WAFs protect the network, but attacks happen inside the app. Zero-days are always a problem because detection-based security will always be one step behind real-time threats.

Defending Java applications the same way we’ve been doing for 20 years is a losing strategy. The world has changed. Attackers have evolved. It’s time security evolved, too.

Cybercriminals aren’t playing fair. They automate reconnaissance, weaponize vulnerabilities instantly, and adapt their tactics faster than defenders can react.

So stop playing fair. Rewrite the rules. Automate. Cheat. Because in cybersecurity, the only way to win is to rig the odds in your favor. After all, who’s going to stop you?

Doug Ennis is the CEO of Waratek, a leader in securing Java applications.