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Opera 7.0 Security Holes ... Fixed

Posted by timothy on from the fat-lady dept.

An anonymous reader writes "GreyMagic has issued five new security advisories for the recently-released Opera 7.0. They affect the security model, the javascript console, images, the history and the error log (allowing access to the history). A new version will be released within 24 hours to fix the holes, according to an article at The Register." Update: 02/05 02:01 GMT by T : An anonymous reader writes "Opera Software have just released Opera 7.01 for Windows. This version fixes the recently discovered security holes less than 24 hours after they were discovered - a very impressive turnaround! The release is currently only available on Opera's FTP site. It can be downloaded with Java (12.9Mb) or without (3.3Mb)."

3 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who in their mind... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Can somebody answer me why someone would buy a web bowser these days?"

    I paid for Opera, and I have 0 regret about that. Opera has, in my opinion, the best user experience. (UI, etc...) Did I have to buy it? No. They have an ad-supported version for free. However, I would like to encourage them to continue down their road towards maintaining the best UI.

    IE 6 is not significantly different from IE5. Though they're free, they do not provide the same evolution that Opera 7 has in relation to Opera 6. Unfortunately, when you aren't making money on your browser, what's your incentive to compete?

    BTW, as long as you're using the Ad-supported version of a browser, you are, in a sense, paying for it. Might as well clear that up now.

  2. Opera support response time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wrote 'em an email complaining about their security-through-obscurity model, and had a reply back from a developer within ten minutes, pointing me to the FTP site with the fixed version...

    That's not a bad response at all, IMHO.

    And no, I don't work for 'em - are they hiring at the moment? :)

  3. Opera beneficial to Open Source by henben · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Even if you don't want to use a commercial browser, the existence of Opera is a good thing for projects like Mozilla.

    Let me explain: Opera have shown their willingness to innovate and add new features to their browser. And they're good at it. Many of their ideas are very useful, *and* they're designed to benefit the user rather than create new "standards" to try and lock in developers.

    Opera promoted the ideas of tabbed browsing and mouse gestures, ideas that were taken up by many Gecko-based browsers. The new release adds and intelligent "forward" button, understanding of navigational META tags, and small screen rendering.

    If you watch Moz and Phoenix, you will see the influence of Opera - for example, the demand for Opera-style "rocker" gestures (using mouse button combos rather than movement) to be added to the gesture extensions.

    Now, I'm not saying that Open Source projects should only clone and never innovate - and in fact, there are many innovations in Mozilla (pie menu navigation and type ahead find, for example). But Opera is a useful source of good interface ideas, and the company is not taking out bogus patents to "protect" them.