Category Archives: Patches and updates

Patches and updates, Security, WordPress and other CMS

Joomla 3.7

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WordPress is the current king of Content Management Systems, but there are others, including Joomla. Web sites built on popular CMS software are enticing targets for malicious hackers, because the people who manage such sites often lack the skills to keep them secure. Keeping a CMS-based site secure mainly involves keeping the CMS software up to date.

Joomla 3.7 — released yesterday — includes over 700 improvements, eight of which are related to security. Several of the security vulnerabilities addressed affect versions of Joomla going back to 1.5 and 2.5.

Joomla 1.0 through 2.5 are no longer supported. If you’re running a site that uses those older versions of Joomla, you should upgrade to 3.7 as soon as possible, as the site is otherwise likely to be hacked.

If you run a Joomla 3.x site, you should update it to 3.7 as soon as possible. If your site currently runs Joomla 3.6.x, it’s a single click update, so there’s no excuse not to do it.

Opera, Patches and updates, Security

Opera 44.0.2510.1449

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Opera’s developers were quick to respond to the recent discovery that many of the major web browsers (including Firefox and Chrome) allow site addresses to be obfuscated using special Unicode characters. Opera 44.0.2510.1449 now shows any Unicode characters in the address bar using the corresponding two digit hexadecimal code, rather than the character itself. The obfuscation technique was being used in phishing schemes.

Opera 44.0.2510.1449 also includes fixes for a few more minor issues. The change log has all the details.

Firefox, Mozilla, Patches and updates, Security, Windows XP

Firefox 53.0: security updates and performance improvements

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A major change to the internal workings of Firefox should result in faster web page rendering on most Windows computers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include Windows XP: starting with version 53.0, Firefox no longer supports XP or Vista.

Firefox 53.0 also fixes at least twenty-nine security issues, so it’s a good idea to update it as soon as possible. Firefox can be rather sluggish about updating itself, but you can usually trigger an update by clicking the menu icon at the top right (three horizontal lines), then the little question mark icon, then About Firefox.

Also in the new release are some improvements to Firefox’s user interface, including two new ‘compact’ themes that free up some screen space. Site permission prompts are now somewhat easier to understand and more difficult to miss. Tab titles that are too long to fit in a tab now fade out at the end instead of being cut off and replaced by ellipses, which makes more of the truncated title visible.

Chrome, Google, Patches and updates, Security

Chrome 58.0.3029.81

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The change log for Chrome 58.0.3029.81 is ten thousand items long, so you might want to think twice before clicking that link. It’s probably safe to say that there are no new features or major changes in the new version, since nothing of the kind is mentioned in the release announcement. This is an important update, though. That’s because it includes fixes for twenty-nine security flaws.

Chrome seems to update itself on most computers within a day or so of a new release, but you can usually trigger an update by opening the browser’s menu (the three-vertical-dots icon at the top right) and navigating to Help > About Google Chrome.

Internet Explorer, Java, Patches and updates, Security, Windows

New Java version: 8 Update 131

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Earlier this week Oracle posted its quarterly Critical Patch Advisory for April 2017. Most of the Oracle software affected by these updates is likely only of interest to system administrators and developers, but buried in the advisory is a list of eight security vulnerabilities in Java 8 Update 121. Although it’s not mentioned in the advisory, those Java vulnerabilities are addressed in a new version of Java: 8 Update 131.

Anyone who uses a web browser with a Java plugin enabled should install Java 8 Update 131 as soon as possible. These days, Firefox, Chrome, and other Chrome-similar browsers like Vivaldi don’t support Java at all, so that leaves Internet Explorer. You can check whether Java is enabled in Internet Explorer by pointing IE to the official Java version test page.

Even if you don’t use a browser with Java enabled, you may have a version of Java installed on your computer, in which case you should consider updating it. You can find out whether Java is installed by looking for the Java applet in the Windows Control Panel. If it’s there, Java is installed; go to the Update tab and click Update now to install the new version.

Oracle sued by the FTC

If you visit the main Java page, you may notice a large all-caps message at the very top of the page: IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING THE SECURITY OF JAVA SE. The message links to a page that discusses an ongoing lawsuit:

The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, has sued us for making allegedly deceptive security claims about Java SE. To settle the lawsuit, we agreed to contact you with instructions on how to protect the personal information on your computer by deleting older versions of Java SE from your computer.

This is a good reminder that Java installers tend to leave old versions and related junk on Windows computers, and that you should always check for and remove old versions of Java after you install a new version. Visit the Java uninstall page and the Java uninstall help page to get started.

Edge, Microsoft, Patches and updates, Privacy, Windows 10

Windows 10 Creators Update

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The next big update for Windows 10 was released on April 11, Patch Tuesday. Opinions differ as to the significance of the update: while Microsoft touts it as something amazing, others see it as something less than a major update.

Still, the new version contains incremental improvements, and a few changes that are likely to be useful. Interesting, but not particularly useful changes include Paint 3D, mixed reality support, and 4K gaming support. Visuals, Ink, Surface Dial, Bluetooth, notifications, background execution, Cortana, Skype, Windows Defender, Windows Store and app download all get modest improvements.

Enhancements to Desktop Bridge, which allows traditional desktop apps to be migrated to the new Windows UI, will make a lot of lives easier. The Windows Subsystem for Linux is also expanded with new functionality. The Edge browser gets some new features that are likely to be helpful for people who actually use Edge. A new Game Mode may make Windows 10 gaming slightly more palatable. Beam game streaming is now built into Windows 10. A new feature called Night Light allows Windows 10 to reduce blue light from a display at specific times.

Windows 10’s privacy settings are overhauled in the new version, including a new privacy dashboard, although the overall result seems to be less control rather than more. The window of time during which Windows 10 can update itself has been widened slightly, but there’s still no way to avoid Microsoft’s remote fiddling unless you’re using an Enterprise version.

All in all, there’s nothing particularly objectionable about this update, and there are enough improvements to make it worthwhile. Which is good, because you’ll get it whether you want it or not. Whenever Microsoft wants you to get it.

More information from Microsoft

Update 2017Apr28: Microsoft says the first phase of the Creators Update rollout is underway. In this phase, only computers with new hardware are being updated. The next phase won’t start until Microsoft is happy with phase one, so it’s difficult to predict when that will happen. Microsoft also recommends enabling ‘full’ telemetry/diagnostic/privacy settings to help diagnose any issues the update may encounter (they’re hoping you’ll forget to disable them as well). Apparently further rollout could be blocked indefinitely if serious issues are encountered at any phase. You can download the update from the Microsoft Download Center, but Microsoft cautions that doing so bypasses blocks and may be somewhat risky. Ars Technica has more.

Adobe, Edge, Flash, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Patches and updates, Security, Silverlight, Windows

Patch Tuesday for April 2017

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As of this month, Microsoft is no longer publishing security bulletins. What we get instead is the Security Update Guide, an online database of Microsoft updates. Instead of a nice series of bulletins in my RSS reader, I get a single notification that contains almost nothing of use, aside from a link to the Security Update Guide. It also recommends enabling auto updates. Suffice to say that they won’t need to change the wording next month.

Security Update Guide

I’m sure it’s possible to create an online update database that works, but the Security Update Guide doesn’t qualify. In the hour I’ve spent so far trying to use it, what I usually see is an empty list. On the occasions when updates were shown, attempting to navigate from there also produced blank lists. Presumably this is happening because the site is overwhelmed, this being Patch Tuesday, but it’s also an excellent demonstration of why simpler systems are often better.

But even assuming that the current (as of 2017Apr11 13:00 PST) issues are transitory, information about the current set of updates that I did manage to see (in brief glimpses) was scattered among hundreds of items in the list. There is an always-visible link to a release notes page for the month’s updates, but sadly that page is far less useful than the summary bulletins previously provided. Aside from a few notes about special cases, all we get is this:

The April security release consists of security updates for the following software:
Internet Explorer
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office Services and Web Apps
Visual Studio for Mac
.NET Framework
Silverlight
Adobe Flash Player

For the period between March’s Patch Tuesday and today, the guide shows 233 total items. To learn more, you have only one obvious option: go through every item in the list, looking for unique Knowledge Base article numbers in the More Info column, and clicking them to see the related KB article. I think I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. If Microsoft improves the guide sufficiently, I’ll go back to providing a more detailed breakdown of the monthly updates.

Update 2017Apr12: On Microsoft’s Security Update Guide, you’ll find a small Download link at the top right of the update list. You can use this to open the update list in Excel, which is a lot easier than using the flaky web-based tool. Using this method, I was able to count the number of unique updates, and it looks like there are forty-two, with forty-four vulnerabilities addressed. CERT’s count is sixty-one.

Update 2017Apr18: Ars Technica wonders if anyone likes the new Security Update Guide.

Update 2017May05: One of the updates is a new version of Silverlight (5.1.50906.0) that addresses a single security issue.

Adobe’s Contribution

As is now almost traditional, Adobe published their own set of updates today. This month we get updates for Flash (seven issues addressed) and Acrobat/Reader (47 issues addressed).

If you still use a web browser with a Flash plugin, you should update it as soon as possible. Internet Explorer and Edge will of course get their own Flash updates via Microsoft Update, while Chrome’s built-in Flash will be updated automatically on most computers.