Erik Costlow

Erik Costlow was Oracle’s principal product manager for Java 8 and 9, focused on security and performance. His security expertise involves threat modeling, code analysis, and instrumentation of security sensors. He is working to broaden this approach to security with Contrast Security. Before becoming involved in technology, Erik was a circus performer who juggled fire on a three-wheel vertical unicycle.

19 articles

Jun 28, 2026 Erik Costlow, Frank Delporte

AI-Assisted Unused & Dead Code Removal

Why Your Codebase Is Forcing AI to Underperform, and What to Do About It Your AI coding assistant is only as good as the codebase it works …

AI Conference

Feb 17, 2025 Erik Costlow, Trisha Gee

Find Undead Code in Your Java Environments

10-30% of the custom code in applications is undead code and can just be deleted. Eliminating undead code can enhance the overall …

Developer Tools Events

Sep 30, 2024 Brian Vermeer, Erik Costlow, Frank Delporte, Jonathan Vila

Foojay Podcast #58: How Java Developers Can Secure Their Code

Three years after Log4Shell caused a significant security issue, we still struggle with insecure dependencies and injection problems...

Debugging Developer Tools

Sep 17, 2024 Erik Costlow

Java: Where the Wild Code Isn't (On Security and Modularity)

The OpenJDK community has made Java safer for users and developers while making it easier to design, build, and run applications quickly.

Security

Aug 13, 2024 Erik Costlow

Trash Pandas Love Enterprise Java Garbage Code

If raccoons were software engineers, they would feel at home inside many enterprise systems. These systems are often full of unused and dead …

Debugging Java Core

May 24, 2024 Erik Costlow

Improve DevOps Productivity with Azul Intelligence Cloud for Any JVM

Intelligence Cloud works with any JVM from any vendor or distribution to slash time from tasks across an enterprise’s entire Java estate.

Java Core Performance

Mar 27, 2023 Erik Costlow, Frank Delporte, Jakob Jenkov, Thanos Stratikopoulos

Foojay Podcast #17: Execute Java Code with TornadoVM

TornadoVM is a programming and execution framework for offloading and running JVM applications on multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs.

Performance Podcast

Mar 24, 2023 Erik Costlow

Java Security: Log4J, the SecurityManager, and Funding

A demonstration of log4j exploits, which defenses people tried, and which worked. We'll cover how groups responded effectively to patch to …

Security Videos

Feb 17, 2023 Erik Costlow

Moving Security into the JVM

With Azul Vulnerability Detection, running the software and getting security insight become the same action.

Release Notes Security

Nov 21, 2022 Brian Vermeer, Erik Costlow, Frank Delporte

Foojay Podcast #7: Security in Java -- what do we need to know?

We invited Java security experts to dive into the fascinating world of secure coding and detecting vulnerabilities in your Java …

Developer Tools DevOps

Sep 20, 2022 Deepu K Sasidharan, Erik Costlow, Frank Delporte, Miro Wengner

Foojay Podcast #5: OpenJDK Discussion Panel

It's September 20th, OpenJDK 19 has been released. In this podcast, we discuss the new features and the changes that this release brings.

Java Core Podcast

Dec 24, 2021 Erik Costlow

foojay - Santa Claus Issues YuleLog4J Advisory

Santa Claus has issued a security advisory for the popular holiday celebration.

Foojay

Dec 13, 2021 Erik Costlow

Log4j2 Isn’t Killing Java

Java developers typically choose from several logging systems or facades. Many of these logging frameworks have grown to work together.

Security

Oct 19, 2021 Erik Costlow, Simon Ritter

Foojay Podcast #4: Why Are There So Many JDKs?

In this podcast, we explore the topic of why there are so many JDKs, how are they the same, and how they are different!

Podcast

Oct 4, 2021 Erik Costlow

Book Review: Quarkus for Spring Developers

Shift your Spring skills to leverage the “supersonic subatomic” Quarkus framework, opportunity for developers to learn two frameworks at …

Book Review Books

Aug 31, 2021 Erik Costlow, Ivar Grimstad, Josh Juneau, Rudy De Busscher

Foojay Podcast #3: Journey to Jakarta EE

Foojay community members discuss the modernization of Jakarta EE and excitement about cool new developments like Microprofile.

Jakarta EE Podcast

Jul 22, 2021 Erik Costlow, Frank Delporte, Johan Vos

Foojay Podcast #2: Embedded Java -- Robots and FX

Foojay podcast, with James Gosling, Java creator, embedded enthusiast, distinguished engineer of AWS GreenGrass, formerly at Liquid …

Foojay Pi4J

Jul 9, 2021 Carl Dea, Erik Costlow, Gerrit Grunwald, Nicolas Frankel

Announcement: Friends of OpenJDK Podcast #1

JavaFX Skins for Android, iOS; BlockHound, for detecting cases of blocking, JEP 411, the SecurityManager deprecation, recent Snyk/Azul …

Foojay Podcast

Feb 9, 2021 Erik Costlow

The SolarWinds Hack for Java Developers

For Java developers and architects who design, build, and run applications, there are two core take-aways to the SolarWinds hack...

JDK Flight Recorder Security