Latest Java Update Broken; Two New Sandbox Bypass Flaws Found

msm1267 writes "Oracle's long security nightmare with Java just gets worse. A post to Full Disclosure this morning from a security researcher indicated that two new sandbox bypass vulnerabilities have been discovered and reported to Oracle, along with working exploit code. Oracle released Java 7u11 last Sunday and said it fixed a pair of vulnerabilities being exploited by all the major exploit kits. Turns out one of those two bugs wasn't completely patched. Today's bugs are apparently not related to the previous security issues."

Comments

Enough Already

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone, please put Java in the browser out of our misery.

Re:Enough Already

[Anonymous Coward]

in defense of both sysad and java, there are developers which just tink that garbage collection is magic and create a memory problem where there is none

Re:Enough Already

[kbg]

This is one of the very stupid things Java has. The user has to set memory limits for the application, either using to much memory or too little, and the memory used is based on the usage for the application so that it is always a possibility to run out of memory for a Java application even if you have enough memory on your machine. This is a major usability and design flaw in Java.

Interesting

[jones_supa]

I still find it odd how Java suddenly caught all the attention regarding security.

Re:Interesting

[dalias]

Yes, in some ways I agree it is a "smear campaign", but I don't think it's an unjustified one. When a product has had vulns this serious this many times, yet maintains huge deployment due to market dominance and user lock-in, a huge smear campaign is needed to destroy it. This was the case in the past with products like BIND, Sendmail, WU-FTPD, IIS, IE, etc. and Java is just the latest necessary target.

Re:The same old story

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Considering that reflection is basically injecting code at runtime

That's pretty narrow, isn't it? Reflection is reification of program's state (and possibly code, which should be a subset of it) in form of (possibly mutable) metaobjects. The interface doesn't necessarily have to allow the program to do things that are inherently unsafe (although some applications need to do precisely that, e.g., Smalltalk IDEs when creating or modifying classes and methods). If Java's reflection features violate Java platform's security, it's an API design flaw, not necessarily a problem with reflection as such. It's not like this is Java's only design flaw anyway. :-)

Re:Just let it die already

[Antipater]

To be fair, coding your way out of a paper bag sounds pretty difficult.

Unless you have a robot with poking capabilities inside the bag with you, of course.

Bad stewardship of Java

[benjfowler]

Oracle need to be called out on what appears to be an open-and-shut case of negligence.

Only a complete idiot would take on Java and it's 600 million users without making some kind of plan for supporting it. Their approach so far has been unbelievably reckless.

I certainly hope they don't take that attitude to Oracle Database, which is very expensive indeed, and running inside companies with lots of well paid lawyers.

Re:The same old story

[sjames]

Reflection is extremely useful given a language that considers it a first class feature rather than a bolt-on. Duck typing, for example,is a specific application of reflection. In turn, duck typing can actually fulfill the promise of reusable code that OOP promises but rarely delivers.

Re:The same old story

[Bob9113]

If Java's reflection features violate Java platform's security, it's an API design flaw, not necessarily a problem with reflection as such.

Java is a progamming language, like C. It has access to the filesystem and can fork processes. Security is handled by the operating system, just like C. Any permission that the executing user has, the language has. That is as designed.

The Java browser plugin, on the other hand, has a sandbox which is supposed to make it safe to run untrusted code. Turns out that trying to make it safe to run untrusted Java code is just as difficult as trying to make it safe to run untrusted C code. The security hole is in the Java sandbox, and in the notion of executing untrusted code in a language that has system access, not in the Java language.

Re:Just let it die already

[icebike]

Oracle appearently cant code their way out of a paperbag but Sun wrote Java 6. Not to say that release is secure but at least less flaky and doesnt have the same flaw as 7.

I think it is starting to look suspiciously like there is some unfair dealing going on in the "security researcher" world.

The fix was released last Sunday and two new security flaw turn up today which, according to the summary and TFA "are apparently not related to the previous security issues."

First, that is very short period of time to find these new flaws, and write a proof of concept.
Were these flaws in the prior release, or introduced by the Sunday release?
Did these guys have them in hand prior to the work on sunday's release and hold them back?
Were they using "research" methods that they refused to share? Fuzzers, code inspection?
If the researchers didn't find these new flaws until after sunday, why not?

Just sayin....

If they keep this up...

[mandark1967]

Adobe is gonna get jealous.

Shouldn't the OS prevent the worst of the damage?

[overunder]

I understand how a sandbox vulnerability could lead to malware being installed on the machine. But that malware still has to then exploit an OS-level security hole, right? The reports make it out that somehow the Java vulnerability allow complete take over of the machine. So I'm confused why the Win7, OSX, etc Access Control mechanism doesn't prevent the potential damage. Or is this specifically targeting users who for example are logged in as admin on a Win box and have explicit approval of system changes via ACL disabled?

For cripes sake... Java Plugin != Java

[diarrhea-uh-uh]

So sick of these headlines. Java is fine, it's the barely-used-these-days plugin that's the problem. I expect non-techy sites to omit that detail, but come on /. For those preaching that Java should be donated to Apache, give me a break. It's at the core of all "Enterprise Applications'" tech stack. Never gonna happen, nor should it. Best solution would be to decouple the plugin from the Java install and no longer shove it down people's throats.

Java is not broken

[zmooc]

The only thing broken here is the Java browser plugin made by Oracle, which has no use whatsoever outside of museums. Java is not broken.