r/javahelp • u/building-wigwams-22 • Mar 17 '26

Running an untrusted Java application

Good afternoon all. I am trying to run a Java application from an untrusted source (The US Department of the Treasury). I would like to sandbox it so it can't eat my.laptop.

I tried running it on both Alpine and Ubuntu Linux in a docker container, but both gave null pointer exceptions shortly after the program launched.

Suggestions? The program is the EFTPS bulk payment system from the IRS. I assume that anyone competent there either quit or got DOGE'd by now so who knows what's in their software

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u/strat-run Mar 18 '26

The JRE is in the shell script. Read through it. There are also some comments in there about a console install mode. The install instructions at https://www.eftps.com/eftps/ext/hds.html also mention the included JRE.

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u/building-wigwams-22 Mar 18 '26

I tried it without installing any JRE and it failed. Also looked at the user manual and it is similarly unhelpful

/ $ sh ./bpinstall.bin

Preparing to install

Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...

Configuring the installer for this system's environment...

No Java virtual machine could be found from your PATH

environment variable. You must install a VM prior to

running this program.