Problems with applet for displaying desktop app's output

Question

I inherited a desktop C++ (VC6) application that uses the user's web browser for output. When the system first wants to display output it writes a temporary html file, fires up the web browser with an html page with an applet that opens a socket that listens for messages on a particular port. The C++ app then sends the temp file name through the socket for the applet to display. When new output comes along the new file name gets sent through the socket and the applet updates the web page (so all of this work is just so that you don't get a new web page for each output). It uses a similar mechanism to display help (sending the relevant section number through the socket). The relevant Java looks something like this:
     m_serverSocket = new ServerSocket(m_theApp.m_port);
and then later
     clientSocket = m_serverSocket.accept();
Recently the Sun decided that connecting to localhost is a security risk (see http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-66-246387-1), so that this accept() now throws a security exception. I'm trying to fix this but I'm not getting anywhere. Here are the things I've tried and decided doesn't work (feel free to point out mistakes or misunderstandings on my side, I'm a noob at java):
1) I changed the C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\lib\security\java.policy file to add "accpet" for localhost:
          permission java.net.SocketPermission "localhost:1024-", "listen,accept";
this works, but I can't use this because a) it isn't safe, b) we don't want users to have to change their java.policy files and obviously the installer can't do it
for them.
2) I don't want to sign the applet because this will be really confusing to users (why should they be asked to trust anything from a desktop app that doesn't even do
anything over the net?)
3) I've tried passing a command line parameter to the applet in order for it to use an "application" specific policy file, but it seems that an applet can't take
the -Djava.security.policy command line parameter.
4) I've read that unsigned applets can (only) open sockets back to the server from which it was loaded, but I'm not using a webserver so there is no server URL (and
localhost doesn't work).
I'm out of ideas but would love to hear some!
Paul

Answer 1

Pay $150 or so to get your certificate signed by one of the major Certification Authorities. Signing your Jar will then stop the user being asked if he trusts the signer.