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Java Zero-Day Vulnerability Rolled Into Exploit Packs
tsu doh nimh writes "The miscreants who maintain Blackhole and Nuclear Pack — competing crimeware products that are made to be stitched into hacked sites and use browser flaws to foist malware — say they've added a brand new exploit that attacks a previously unknown and currently unpatched security hole in Java. The curator of Blackhole, a miscreant who uses the nickname 'Paunch,' announced yesterday on several Underweb forums that the Java zero-day was a 'New Year's Gift,' to customers who use his exploit kit. The exploit has since been verified to work on all Java 7 versions by AlienVault Labs. The news comes days after it was revealed that Paunch was reserving his best exploits for a more closely-held exploit pack called Cool Exploit Kit, a license for which costs $10,000 per month."
At this point there is no reason for most home user systems to have Java on them at all. Just uninstall it and remove this never ending hole from your life.
If you do need it for something (like Minecraft), you can remove it from the browser, which tends to also solve the security problems (unless the Java updater adds itself back in, which it's been known to do). Still a better option than just leaving it. There's very few websites left that actually use Java for anything today.
It sucks more in the corporate world, where there's a lot more Java and thus no easy answer for the security problems that plague it. But for home users? Just remove it and make your life easier.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It would be very difficult to cull Java in an Enterprise environment that was build on it even if you wanted to. Convincing your Boss that you have to redevelop the entire system just to do it would also be a difficult task.
Sure, but I have No Script installed to keep it from running except when I need it to.
Sadly, I find myself needing Java for a lot of work related stuff. I even have a couple of machines that still have Flash on them because it's occasionally called for.
In the real world, you can't always get away from using it since there's always some company required thing you need to access -- but that doesn't mean I'm prepared to let it run by default on just any web site.
Hell, a lot of the tools I need to run daily for work are in Java.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Seriously? This person is licensing an exploit kit for $10,000 per month and nobody has bothered following the money to shut him down? I have a hard time believing anyone could make $10K/mo doing this anyway. Wouldn't the first order of business by the exploit buyers be to make it work without the payments? What's the author going to do? Sue them for non-payment?
You know the difference between a browser plugin and the JRE?
Do you really think that having eclipse or matlab installed on your computer (both contain a JRE) makes it magically vulnerable?
my bank requires it.
most browsers today though ask per page if you want to run it, don't they? at least firefox does..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Disable Flash and Java. Most websites with video will work fine, even if some require to change your user-agent to "iPad".
What do you mean, your browser can't display H.264 natively? Get a real browser.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Why would you not develop systemns in it, or rewrite existing ones? Just stop using the ridiculous browser plug-in. It's the new ActiveX.
If you use IE you can disable Java for all sites except the "enterprise ones". Even on IE6 - assuming an Enterprise environment typical of the sort you are talking about ;).
At this point does any tech savvy user don't know the difference between the Java Runtime Environment and the Java Browser Plugin? Just disable/remove the plugin.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
These are the idiots who make life so difficult for legit network guys. That summary reads like George Washington just raided another British outpost. Whether for curiosity or profit, remember who the bad guys are!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
> > If you play Minecraft you need Java installed.
> False. You don't need the Java browser plugin for Minecraft, only the JRE.
His statement is true. Having the JRE installed is having Java installed. It is correct that the browser plugin is unnecessary. But his original statement is entirely correct.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Sure, I have the JRE installed on my work laptop - but I sure as hell don't have the browser plugin installed. Nor Flash, nor AdobePDF. When I need Flash, I fire up Chrome for that particular site. When I need Java (which us Danes sadly do for online banking and government interaction), I fire up a virtual machine image dedicated just for that.
And my main browser, FireFox, has NoScript, AdBlockPlus, Ghostery and Certificate Patrol (any more addons I should know about?), work laptop as well as my own machines. But I digress. JRE: not a problem in and by itself. Just stay way clear off the browser plugin. And Flash. And AdobePDF.
Coffee-driven development.
and the latest Java 7 update added features to disable Java applets and JNLP from browsers, that way if you need Java for an application like Eclipse, but don't need Java on the browser, you can secure yourself
I don't know why it isn't enabled by default, but Firefox has a click-to-play plugins option that should dramatically reduce the exposure to exploits like this. So NoScript isn't required.
about:config
plugins.click_to_play = true
Name any piece of irreplaceable software for any user. Windows? nope, not for Mac users or Linux users. Firefox? not for Chrome users. The only irreplaceable software is based on C, but customers don't need to be aware of that. There are plenty of great Java programs out there that are without peer for users that need them (which doesn't happen to include you). So your argument is bunk - you just made it because you don't like Java - but you are lacking the insight to see that your argument extends to all software technologies (with the exception of C, which is pretty much core to all systems). So get real, eh? Java has plenty of uses - unless all you do all day is consume web content like Facebook and make mindless statements as an AC on Slashdot.
I have been coding in Java for quite a long time and there are essentially two archetypes of very crappy coders:
1) The people who don't have what it takes to be a decent engineer (in any language) and are just creating horrible crap because that's the only thing they were taught in college.
2) The people who "Would rather be coding something else". Often (but not always) a bit older engineers who might not have had any education in Java and any understanding they do have (whether it's from formal education or from them having read half a book a decade ago) is horribly outdated and incomplete. They stubbornly insist that if some of the architectural structures that they learned decades ago for different type of applications and for different environments end up creating a bad Java application, Java is to blame.
The first archetype are useless but harmless: They write bad code but do so very slowly and don't dare to touch anything that looks intimidating which means they generally can't screw anything important up. The second archetype is who I immediately blame whenever I get a "WTF was someone thinking?" moment when looking at some major design decision.
Folks like Paunch need to get got if for no other reason than to remove a justification for governents around the world (China and the US getting closer to the same page everyday) to regulate the Internet and render online anonymity a crime (all in the name of Snowflake Security, of course).
For fun? Minecraft.
For work? Burp suite (there are other HTTP proxies, but none that do as well what I need them to do).
There's also things like Eclipse and NetBeans (developers are people too... even if they are Java developers), of course... Java begets Java, to a certain degree, and there's already so much Java out there that it's pretty much impossible to stop creating more of it anytime in the reasonable future.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Your bank requires Java, not Javascript? Are you in the US? I've never seen that before, though I hear web-based banking varies considerably between countries.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
All the Java problems were with applets. Considering how many security problems were with Flash too, maybe the problem is with the browser APIs.
Because some people deployed the applications using Applets and WebStart so just getting rid of it becomes a bit of an issue.
Nobody uses applets for anything anymore - except the baddies - disable the java browser plugin and be done with it. Webstart is not the problem.
What does "online java application" mean? The app opens a network connection and communicates with some other host?
Such an app would not become more safe if it were written in, say, C++ or C# or most other languages.
The danger about java is in the browser plugin, because it downloads and runs untrusted byte code. This is about as unsafe as using an ordinary browser with java script enabled - which also downloads and runs untrusted code.