How do I update LoginModule's shared state (wildcards)?

Question

In the API definition for interface javax.security.auth.spi.LoginModule, the prototype for initialize is as follows:
public void initialize(Subject subject, CallbackHandler ch, Map<String, ?> sharedState, Map<String,?> options);I can believe that 'options' is read-only but sharedState is used for passing data such as passwords along to stacked modules -- other login modules that might use the same credentials so you don't have to ask the user for the same thing twice. So my login module needs to write to it.
I'm kinda shaky on wildcards but I can't think of a way to put any object into sharedState since I have no idea what type it might be. This looks like an example of a "partially immutable" collection as referred to here: http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2004/01/15/wildcards.html?page=2
Any way to do it without deleting the type information from the method signature (and thereby getting unchecked warnings)?

Answer 1

What have you tried?
You should be able to create a Map of String to
'anything' and pass it to either of those
parameters.Let me clarify: the LoginModule is an interface that is essentially a set of callbacks called from within Sun library code. So the actual definition of the Map<String,?> isn't under my control! It's passed to me.
When you use JAAS, you create a new javax.security.auth.login.LoginContext (the library object) and supply it with the name of your LoginModule implementation. LoginContext creates the maps and then instantiates and calls into your LoginModule.
I have tried various incantations of assigning it to my own Map<String,(something here)>. But this seems wrongheaded because based on the method parameters alone I'll never know what value type is stored in the map. The only thing that works is to just define my initialize method with plain Map parameters and live with unchecked warnings.