Oracle squashes 109 bugs in quarterly patch batch

Hot fresh Java will flush parasites from your system

By John Leyden, 17th October 2012

Oracle published the latest edition of its quarterly patch update on Tuesday, addressing 109 vulnerabilities in 10 products.

The patch batch coincided with a release of a new version of Java, tackling 30 vulnerabilities. The Oracle Java SE critical patch for various supported versions of the software is important because Java vulnerabilities have become a prime target of hacker exploits and zero-days over the last couple of years or so.

This had led to widespread advice from security watchers that Java should be disabled, at least in the browser (most websites don't require it).

Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of cloud security firm Qualys, lists the Java update as among the most pressing priority for patching. Applying patches for Solaris and updating MySQL on internet connected servers also need to prioritised among many updates issued by Oracle on Tuesday.

"The Java update should be applied as soon as possible to workstations and servers," Kandek explained in a blog post. "It contains patches for 10 highly critical vulnerabilities that all have a CVSS of 10, all remotely exploitable without authentication.

"Oracle credits a number of contributors for the vulnerabilities found, including Security Explorations, a security company from Poland that had submitted a large number of vulnerabilities to Oracle in April of this year."

Other crucial updates (that rate the maximum Common Vulnerability Scoring System [CVSS] severity score of 10) include a Oracle RDBMS (relational database management system) patch that tackles a flaw unveiled last month at the Ekoparty security conference in Argentina. Windows servers running the vulnerable software are most at risk of attack.

An update to Oracle's MySQL lances 14 vulnerabilities, two of which can be accessed remotely with authentication. Oracle Solaris and Glassfish products are also affected by flaws that lend themselves to remote exploitation by hackers.

Oracle Fusion Middleware, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards and others also need patching but the vulnerabilities tackled in these cases are less severe and harder to exploit.

"Quite a number of products are being patched, also for those of you subject to PCI DSS [credit card industry regulation] there are a significant number of patches addressing issues with a CVSS score of 4 or higher, which must be patched under the standard," a blog post by the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Centre adds. ®

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Posted Wednesday 17th October 2012 20:18 GMT

Anonymous Coward

Bet there's one they've not got rid of

That fscking malware that gets distributed as a Java update - the one that defaults to installing unrelated, unnecessary and unwanted third rate software on your PC.