ID: IRCNE2013011733
Date: 2013-01-15
According to "computerworld", Oracle released two out-of-band patches on Sunday for vulnerabilities in its Java programming language, both of which pose a high risk to users browsing the web.
"Oracle recommends that this security alert be applied as soon as possible because these issues may be exploited 'in the wild' and some exploits are available in various hacking tools," wrote Oracle's Eric Maurice[cq] on the company's security blog.
Both vulnerabilities expose users to the possibility of being attacked by a malicious "applet," which is a Java application that is downloaded from another server and runs if a user has Java installed. Applets are embedded in web pages and run in the browser.
The affected software platforms are any system using Oracle's Java 7 (1.7, 1.7.0) through the 10th update, according to an advisory from the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. That also includes Java Platform Standard Edition 7, Java SE Development Kit and Java SE Runtime Environment.
The vulnerability lies "in the way Java 7 restricts the permissions of Java applets could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on a vulnerable system," US CERT said.
The second patch repairs a vulnerability, CVE-2012-3174, in Java that runs in web browsers, Oracle said. It also can be exploited remotely by tricking users into navigating to a booby-trapped website.
Related Link:
New malware exploiting Java 7 in Windows and Unix systems
US-CERT: Disable Java in browsers because of exploit
Java security fix coming shortly
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