application suddenly starts to fail with 'Invalid authentica

[pkorros]

Our J2EE application suddenly starts to fail with the following exception:

java.lang.SecurityException: Invalid authentication attempt, principal=null
at org.jboss.resource.connectionmanager.BaseConnectionManager2.getSubject(BaseConnectionManager2.java:589)
at org.jboss.resource.connectionmanager.BaseConnectionManager2.allocateConnection(BaseConnectionManager2.java:395)
at org.jboss.resource.connectionmanager.BaseConnectionManager2$ConnectionManagerProxy.allocateConnection(BaseConnectionManager2.java:842)
at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.JmsSessionFactoryImpl.allocateConnection(JmsSessionFactoryImpl.java:389)
at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.JmsSessionFactoryImpl.createQueueSession(JmsSessionFactoryImpl.java:144)
at com.oakgrovesystems.reactor.services.policyExecution.MDBMessageSender.init(MDBMessageSender.java:158)
at com.oakgrovesystems.reactor.services.policyExecution.MDBMessageSender.sendEvent(MDBMessageSender.java:35)
at com.oakgrovesystems.reactor.services.policyExecution.PolicyExecutor.fireEvent(PolicyExecutor.java:343)
at com.oakgrovesystems.reactor.services.policyExecution.PolicyExecutor.execute(PolicyExecutor.java:315)
at com.oakgrovesystems.reactor.services.policyExecution.PolicyExecutionMessageBean.execute(PolicyExecutionMessageBean.java:213)
at com.oakgrovesystems.reactor.services.policyExecution.PolicyExecutionMessageBean.handleExecuteMessage(PolicyExecutionMessageBean.java:203)
at com.oakgrovesystems.reactor.services.policyExecution.PolicyExecutionMessageBean.onMessage(PolicyExecutionMessageBean.java:117)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor365.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
at org.jboss.invocation.Invocation.performCall(Invocation.java:359)
at org.jboss.ejb.MessageDrivenContainer$ContainerInterceptor.invoke(MessageDrivenContainer.java:495)
at org.jboss.resource.connectionmanager.CachedConnectionInterceptor.invoke(CachedConnectionInterceptor.java:158)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.MessageDrivenInstanceInterceptor.invoke(MessageDrivenInstanceInterceptor.java:116)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.CallValidationInterceptor.invoke(CallValidationInterceptor.java:63)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.AbstractTxInterceptor.invokeNext(AbstractTxInterceptor.java:121)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.TxInterceptorCMT.runWithTransactions(TxInterceptorCMT.java:350)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.TxInterceptorCMT.invoke(TxInterceptorCMT.java:181)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.RunAsSecurityInterceptor.invoke(RunAsSecurityInterceptor.java:109)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.LogInterceptor.invoke(LogInterceptor.java:205)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.ProxyFactoryFinderInterceptor.invoke(ProxyFactoryFinderInterceptor.java:136)
at org.jboss.ejb.MessageDrivenContainer.internalInvoke(MessageDrivenContainer.java:402)
at org.jboss.ejb.Container.invoke(Container.java:954)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.jms.JMSContainerInvoker.invoke(JMSContainerInvoker.java:987)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.jms.JMSContainerInvoker$MessageListenerImpl.onMessage(JMSContainerInvoker.java:1287)
at org.jboss.jms.asf.StdServerSession.onMessage(StdServerSession.java:266)
at org.jboss.mq.SpyMessageConsumer.sessionConsumerProcessMessage(SpyMessageConsumer.java:905)
at org.jboss.mq.SpyMessageConsumer.addMessage(SpyMessageConsumer.java:170)
at org.jboss.mq.SpySession.run(SpySession.java:323)
at org.jboss.jms.asf.StdServerSession.run(StdServerSession.java:194)
at EDU.oswego.cs.dl.util.concurrent.PooledExecutor$Worker.run(PooledExecutor.java:748)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

The application tries to obtain a connection to the message queue with the following code:

Context context = new InitialContext();
QueueConnectionFactory queueFactory = (QueueConnectionFactory) context.lookup(factoryName);
queueConnection = queueFactory.createQueueConnection();
queueSession = queueConnection.createQueueSession(false,Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
queue = (Queue) context.lookup(queueName);
queueSender = queueSession.createSender(queue);

This block of code is called all the time, as our application is heavily based on jms queues, and works correctly under heavy ussage for many days in our production environment.
The problem is that suddenly it starts to fail to open a connection to the message queue. When this happens only a restart of the application server can solve the problem.

Any ideas on what may be wrong? How could we trace the problem? Is there a way to solve the problem without restarting the server?

environment:

AS: JBoss 4.0.5
JDK: SUN 1.5.0_10
OS: MS Windows 2003
Database: MS SQLServer 2005