Is it possible to read the memory of a running java application?

Question

I'd like to learn how, or if its possible at all to programmaticly interact with a black-box java application(by reading its data). Has there been any previous research/work on doing this sort of thing?

I'd imagine that running on a JVM significantly complicates things.

@anon: Doing this with any JVM is relevant. Do you have to know or control the specifics of how the JVM allocates memory to extract data from a java application?

Answer 1

You could look into java.lang.instrument. As long as you understand the class structure of the application, it will let you modify the methods in an already-running JVM and you may be able to concoct a way that allows you to extract or insert data enough to communicate (depends on the methods available, of course).

Answer 2

The Sable group at McGill University has contributed a lot of research to the Java world.

Much of the work is getting rather dated, but you might find some help in their EVolve project which has the goal of visualizing object-oriented programs. Some of their projects appear to be actively maintained (such as Soot, their Java optimization framework), so you might find luck contacting them directly