Vulnerabilities in latest Java

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Oh no, not again! Adam Gowdiak of the Security Explorations research team has been hard at work, looking for holes in the latest Java (7u15). Here’s a quote from Mr. Gowdiak’s alert email:

We had yet another look into Oracle’s Java SE 7 software that was released by the company on Feb 19, 2013. As a result, we have discovered two new security issues (numbered 54 and 55), which when combined together can be successfully used to gain a complete Java security sandbox bypass in the environment of Java SE 7 Update 15 (1.7.0_15-b03).

Gowdiak has submitted his findings to Java’s developers, but there has been no official confirmation from Oracle/Sun as yet. Still, I’m cautioning Java users – especially those of us who have Java enabled in our web browsers – to exercise extreme caution, and flagging Java 7u15 as possibly vulnerable.

Ars Technica has more details.

About jrivett

Jeff Rivett has worked with and written about computers since the early 1980s. His first computer was an Apple II+, built by his father and heavily customized. Jeff's writing appeared in Computist Magazine in the 1980s, and he created and sold a game utility (Ultimaker 2, reviewed in the December 1983 Washington Apple Pi Journal) to international markets during the same period. Proceeds from writing, software sales, and contract programming gigs paid his way through university, earning him a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) degree at UWO. Jeff went on to work as a programmer, sysadmin, and manager in various industries. There's more on the About page, and on the Jeff Rivett Consulting site.

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