The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Oracle patches 'sitting duck' database vulns

Apply or be own3d

Free whitepaper – Unified Server Configurator

Oracle posted 41 patches on Tuesday as part of its regular quarterly patching cycle, with core database vulnerabilities being heavily represented.

The patch batch covers 17 updates for Oracle Database products, 11 updates for Oracle E-Business Suite, three updates for Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise products, along with six updates for Oracle Siebel SimBuilder products, among others. The load is less than previous security updates, but their impact on key vulnerable databases (in particular) is potentially serious, security watchers warn.

Slavik Markovich, CTO of database security software firm Sentrigo, explained: "It looks like the number of affected database components is larger this time than previous times, including patches in the core RDBMS engine and query optimiser... I can see advanced queuing in there. An endless source for SQL Injections and buffer overflows.

"Two of the vulnerabilities can be remotely exploited without authentication, which basically means that your database is a sitting duck unless you deploy this patch. The last we saw of those was, I believe, six months ago," he added.

Oracle's bulletin can be found here. A summary from security clearing house US CERT can be found here. ®

Free whitepaper – Avoiding costs from oversizing data center and network room infrastructure

Don’t Miss

Windows VistaWindows 95 to Windows 7: How Microsoft lost its vision

Comment Behind the taskbar

Ubuntu teaser Ubuntu's Karmic Koala bares fangs at Windows 7

Review Shuttleworthian scrap

AppleChange your views: OS X tags exploited

Mac Secrets Apple windows insider

JavaSun preps cell-phone Java plan for netbooks

OpenWorld 09 Modules not globules