Homeland Security is warning Americans to disable Java on their computers due to a security flaw that appeared in Java after the latest update. In an announcement issued Jan. 10, 2013 and revised today, Jan. 12, 2013, Homeland Security explained the seriousness of this threat:
"Java 7 Update 10 and earlier Java 7 versions contain an unspecified vulnerability that can allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system."
"By convincing a user to visit a specially crafted HTML document, a remote attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system. Note that applications that use the Internet Explorer web content rendering components, such as Microsoft Office or Windows Desktop Search, may also be used as an attack vector for this vulnerability."
On Friday, Jan. 11, 2013, Oracle announced that they were working on a security fix, according to The Baltimore Sun:
"A fix will be available shortly," the company said in a statement released late on Friday.
Company officials could not be reached on Saturday to say how quickly the update would be available for the hundreds of millions of PCs that have Java installed.
To disable Java, the place to start is usually the Java Control Panel, accessible through the Control Panel of the computer. It needs to be disabled in all of your browsers, but the latest version of Java will allow all to be disabled at the same time. To be safe, disable each browser individually. Some very good instruction specific to each browser can be found here on PC Mag.com.
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