Do Not Throw java.lang.Throwable

ID

java.no_throw_throwable

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Reliability

Language

Java

Tags

CWE:397, reliability

Description

Reports throw new Throwable(…​) statements where the raw java.lang.Throwable is instantiated and thrown directly.

Rationale

java.lang.Throwable is the root of the entire exception hierarchy. Throwing it forces callers to catch (Throwable) to intercept it, which also catches Error and its subclasses (e.g. OutOfMemoryError, StackOverflowError). This makes error handling fragile and defeats the purpose of the type hierarchy.

// Bad -- callers must catch Throwable, swallowing Errors too
public void process() throws Throwable {
    throw new Throwable("something failed");
}

Remediation

Throw a meaningful Exception or RuntimeException subclass instead:

// Good -- callers can handle specifically
public void process() {
    throw new IllegalStateException("something failed");
}

References