至少有两个原因。

第一-安全http://www.javafaq.nu/java-article1060.html

The main reason why String made immutable was security. Look at this example: We have a file open method with login check. We pass a String to this method to process authentication which is necessary before the call will be passed to OS. If String was mutable it was possible somehow to modify its content after the authentication check before OS gets request from program then it is possible to request any file. So if you have a right to open text file in user directory but then on the fly when somehow you manage to change the file name you can request to open "passwd" file or any other. Then a file can be modified and it will be possible to login directly to OS.

第二-内存效率http://hikrish.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-string-class-is-immutable.html

JVM internally maintains the "String Pool". To achive the memory efficiency, JVM will refer the String object from pool. It will not create the new String objects. So, whenever you create a new string literal, JVM will check in the pool whether it already exists or not. If already present in the pool, just give the reference to the same object or create the new object in the pool. There will be many references point to the same String objects, if someone changes the value, it will affect all the references. So, sun decided to make it immutable.

实际上，字符串在java中是不可变的原因与安全性没有太大关系。主要有以下两个原因:

Thead安全:

字符串是被广泛使用的对象类型。因此，它或多或少可以保证在多线程环境中使用。字符串是不可变的，以确保在线程之间共享字符串是安全的。拥有一个不可变的字符串可以确保当线程A将字符串传递给另一个线程B时，线程B不能意外地修改线程A的字符串。

Not only does this help simplify the already pretty complicated task of multi-threaded programming, but it also helps with performance of multi-threaded applications. Access to mutable objects must somehow be synchronized when they can be accessed from multiple threads, to make sure that one thread doesn't attempt to read the value of your object while it is being modified by another thread. Proper synchronization is both hard to do correctly for the programmer, and expensive at runtime. Immutable objects cannot be modified and therefore do not need synchronization.

性能:

虽然已经提到了字符串实习，但它只代表了Java程序内存效率的一小部分提高。只有字符串字面量被存储。这意味着只有源代码中相同的字符串才会共享相同的字符串对象。如果你的程序动态地创建了相同的字符串，它们将在不同的对象中表示。

More importantly, immutable strings allow them to share their internal data. For many string operations, this means that the underlying array of characters does not need to be copied. For example, say you want to take the five first characters of String. In Java, you would calls myString.substring(0,5). In this case, what the substring() method does is simply to create a new String object that shares myString's underlying char[] but who knows that it starts at index 0 and ends at index 5 of that char[]. To put this in graphical form, you would end up with the following:

 |               myString                  |
 v                                         v
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"   <-- shared char[]
 ^   ^
 |   |  myString.substring(0,5)

这使得这种操作非常便宜，O(1)，因为该操作既不依赖于原始字符串的长度，也不依赖于我们需要提取的子字符串的长度。这种行为也有一些内存好处，因为许多字符串可以共享它们的底层char[]。

哇!我不敢相信这里的错误信息。不可变的字符串与安全性无关。如果某人已经可以访问正在运行的应用程序中的对象(如果你试图防止某人在你的应用程序中“入侵”字符串，就必须假设这一点)，那么他们肯定有很多其他可用的黑客机会。

String的不可变性解决了线程问题，这是一个相当新颖的想法。嗯…我有一个被两个不同线程改变的对象。我如何解决这个问题?同步对对象的访问?Naawww……让我们不要让任何人改变对象——这将解决我们所有混乱的并发问题!事实上，让我们让所有对象都是不可变的，然后我们就可以从Java语言中删除synchronized结构。

The real reason (pointed out by others above) is memory optimization. It is quite common in any application for the same string literal to be used repeatedly. It is so common, in fact, that decades ago, many compilers made the optimization of storing only a single instance of a String literal. The drawback of this optimization is that runtime code that modifies a String literal introduces a problem because it is modifying the instance for all other code that shares it. For example, it would be not good for a function somewhere in an application to change the String literal "dog" to "cat". A printf("dog") would result in "cat" being written to stdout. For that reason, there needed to be a way of guarding against code that attempts to change String literals (i. e., make them immutable). Some compilers (with support from the OS) would accomplish this by placing String literal into a special readonly memory segment that would cause a memory fault if a write attempt was made.

在Java中，这被称为实习。这里的Java编译器只是遵循了编译器几十年来所做的标准内存优化。为了解决这些String字面值在运行时被修改的相同问题，Java简单地使String类不可变(即，不提供允许您更改String内容的setter)。如果字符串字面量没有发生转换，字符串就不必是不可变的。

不可变性与安全性并没有那么紧密的联系。为此，至少在。net中，你得到了SecureString类。

稍后编辑:在Java中，你会发现GuardedString，一个类似的实现。

我知道这是个意外，但是… 它们真的是不可变的吗? 考虑以下几点。

public static unsafe void MutableReplaceIndex(string s, char c, int i)
{
    fixed (char* ptr = s)
    {
        *((char*)(ptr + i)) = c;
    }
}

...

string s = "abc";
MutableReplaceIndex(s, '1', 0);
MutableReplaceIndex(s, '2', 1);
MutableReplaceIndex(s, '3', 2);
Console.WriteLine(s); // Prints 1 2 3

你甚至可以让它成为一个扩展方法。

public static class Extensions
{
    public static unsafe void MutableReplaceIndex(this string s, char c, int i)
    {
        fixed (char* ptr = s)
        {
            *((char*)(ptr + i)) = c;
        }
    }
}

是什么使下面的工作

s.MutableReplaceIndex('1', 0);
s.MutableReplaceIndex('2', 1);
s.MutableReplaceIndex('3', 2);

Conclusion: They're in an immutable state which is known by the compiler. Of couse the above only applies to .NET strings as Java doesn't have pointers. However a string can be entirely mutable using pointers in C#. It's not how pointers are intended to be used, has practical usage or is safely used; it's however possible, thus bending the whole "mutable" rule. You can normally not modify an index directly of a string and this is the only way. There is a way that this could be prevented by disallowing pointer instances of strings or making a copy when a string is pointed to, but neither is done, which makes strings in C# not entirely immutable.

根据Effective Java，第4章，第73页，第二版:

"There are many good reasons for this: Immutable classes are easier to design, implement, and use than mutable classes. They are less prone to error and are more secure. [...] "Immutable objects are simple. An immutable object can be in exactly one state, the state in which it was created. If you make sure that all constructors establish class invariants, then it is guaranteed that these invariants will remain true for all time, with no effort on your part. [...] Immutable objects are inherently thread-safe; they require no synchronization. They cannot be corrupted by multiple threads accessing them concurrently. This is far and away the easiest approach to achieving thread safety. In fact, no thread can ever observe any effect of another thread on an immutable object. Therefore, immutable objects can be shared freely [...]

同一章的其他要点:

不仅可以共享不可变对象，还可以共享它们的内部结构。 […] 不可变对象为其他对象提供了很好的构建块，无论是可变的还是不可变的。 […] 不可变类的唯一缺点是，它们需要为每个不同的值提供一个单独的对象。