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Oracle Patches Java 7 Vulnerability
First time accepted submitter JavaBear writes "Oracle have just released the u7 release of their Java 7. From the article: 'In response to the findings of a recent vulnerability in Java 7 that was being exploited by malware developers, Oracle has released an official patch that takes care of the problem.
In the past week, a new vulnerability was unveiled in Oracle's Java 7 runtime, which has been used by hackers in targeted attacks on Windows-based systems. Similar to the recent Flashback malware in OS X, this vulnerability allows criminals to create a drive-by hack where the only action needed to compromise a system is to visit a rogue Web page that hosts a malicious Java applet."
Given all the news lately, I first read that as 'Patents'...
We have J.P. Patches Avenue in Fremont, Seattle, after all.
Downloaded and applied both the 32 bit and 64 bit Win 7 patches. If you use both Firefox and IE you might have multiple versions on the 64 bit OS.
The linux update was a lot more informative and descriptive than the Win 7 FF and Win 7 IE versions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Which is fair given that they hadn't really said much about it until this point. It's possible this is actually oracle policy, it's possible the press made them change or break policy. Everyone had understood their policy to be 'no out of cycle patch', and waiting until Oct 26, that's why a bunch of people came up with a hack patch for it, that's why the press was all over this.
Some of this might just be Oracle not being used to dealing with end users, and they really do out of cycle patches for serious exploits etc. and they just did a shitty job of conveying that. It's also possible Larry got exploited while looking at porn and beat up a minion to make him fix it.
See guys, was that so hard? Now next time you should focus on getting the patch out before it gets exploited in the wild, since you've been sitting on this exploit for the last 4 months.
Fact: Java 6 isn't vulnerable to this attack.
There are other problems that they are exposed to, but this isn't one of them.
I have to deal with Oracle every day. They operate much like a company that I used to work for... ATT. ATT is so large, so ubiquitous, their profits so untouchable, that they just don't give a shit anymore. They don't need to. To address a problem, ATT creates a new department, at the expense of millions of dollars. Often that new department does something as trivial as copy data from one system to another. Hiring a team of 10 people to do manual data entry all day every day is easier/cheaper than paying developers to do it right.
Knowing what I know of Oracle, I'm sure that the "Mal-ware investigatory department" sent in form 24b-FF with a priority level 3 as soon as they knew about the issue. That form was received by a "Critical patch program director" who then scheduled the appropriate conference calls and meetings to discuss who would head up, design, testing, implementation, cost projections, etc... Once the team was assembled 2hr meetings with catered lunch were scheduled daily to discuss progress and adjusted cost projections. Now that the patch has been released, they will enter a post patch analysis of self aggrandizing back patting.
You can't get rid of Oracle. They are the ATT of Databases. Everyone is stuck with them, they know it, we just have to bend over and hope they use lube.
I killed Java 7 on Monday at my work. I won't bring it back any time soon. Oracle, in case you care this is how you messed this up royally:
1. You sat on this since April. /remove/ your product.
2. Exploits have been in the wild since last weekend and you didn't even acknowledge it until today.
3. The community was left to fend for themselves, and the only way to fend for themselves was to
This is how you should have had handled this:
1. You should have patched this during your normal patch release cycle that you had since April.
2. You should have immediately acknowledged the exploit.
3. You should have immediately acknowledged the breadth of the exploit.
4. A very simple note on your blog to the affect of "were working on this, expect something shortly" would have made all the difference.
As a result of your failure to take security half as seriously as Microsoft (I never could have imagined I would say that 10 years ago), I spent the first have of my week testing an emergency uninstall package of Java for multiple platforms. After getting it approved through an ECAB and rushing it into production - since I had no idea when you were going to release a patch I uninstalled Java 7 system wide at a very large institution this week.
After my emergency uninstall went into production it came up in a meeting with management today that an out of band patch got released today. At this point my response to management was simple, "too late". No one questioned my decision and Java 7 is now gone.
Learn from this Oracle, learn from this, you royally fucked this up.
Coincidentally Java 6 update 35 was also released at the same time. The release notes cite a security fix. All CVE entries and info I could find only describe this issue as a Java 7 vulnerability. I had not see any confirmation yet that it also applied to Java 6 other than the brand new update.
My understanding is... no. HTML5 and plain old JavaScript should replace or supercede pretty much anything an Applet can do. I think there still could be a place for Java WebStart, but I'm concerned for JavaFX in light of HTML5 as well. JavaFX seems just too late to the game. Like Java's eventual answer to Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight just in time to surrender to HTML5. Then again, this is in terms of using JavaFX in the web tier, you can still write native apps, like games, with JavaFX for hardware accelerated graphic goodness.
I'll call them scum for attempting to foist the Ask Toolbar on us again for a security update.
The default in Java is to check for an update every month. If you want to reduce your exposure to "30-day" exploits, it would be wise to go into the Java control panel applet and increase the update check frequency to monthly or daily if you must use Java. "Update Now" is available on the update tab of the control panel applet if you don't want to download this update from the web.
Now my patch cycle is going to be screwed up! /sarcasm
The default in Java is to check for an update every month.
Yet the java updater keeps on running in the background at all times, instead of using the OS scheduler.
Fact: Java 6 isn't vulnerable to this attack.
Wrong, Java 6 is affected. From the "Security Alert":
Affected product releases and versions:
JDK and JRE 7 Update 6 and before
JDK and JRE 6 Update 34 and before
But it appears Oracle did not provide a patch for Java 6 yesterday.
The thing on my mind is, how much does Oracle earn with a patch release. The ask toolbar crapware is installed by default and people hitting "next next next" will be infected. Only by installing this with care you will not get the ask toolbar. I know they are not alone in this (adobe wants to install the crome browser as default AND the google toolbar for IE, talk about redundancy) but they incorporate it in all updates..
Wouldn't it be great if Microsoft bundled a bing search toolbar with every .net update..
Well. No.
For the same reason: DieAskToolbarDie.
Privacy is terrorism.