Articles about Java

Allow me to begin with an emphatic statement: if you have Java on your computer then get it off now! Oracle released its latest round of security patches for the incredibly buggy, and surprisingly still popular, platform, with numerous new holes waiting to either be patched or exploited.

When word came down of the latest fixes and I mentioned it in the BetaNews newsroom, our president Scott Alperin could utter only "seems like time to put PC-side Java out of its misery". Indeed.

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If the latest Java security scares have persuaded you to ditch the technology forever, then removing it from your PC is normally straightforward. Java’s regular uninstaller should do the job in just a few seconds.

If this doesn’t work, though -- or you just want to remove and reinstall Java, because of problems with your system -- then it might be worth trying JavaRA, a compact tool that can help you to update or cleanly uninstall the Java Runtime Environment.

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How's this for a helluva endorsement for Windows security over OS X? Today, Microsoft acknowledged falling prey to "similar security intrusion" as Apple and Facebook. They got nabbed by a Java exploit affecting Apple's OS.

"We found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit that, were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations", says Microsoft security chief Matt Thomlinson.

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Oracle has had no shortage of headaches recently, thanks to Java. The exploits have been running wild lately, making attempts to fix the problems resemble a game of whack-a-mole. In fact, the troubles even resulted in the United States Department of Homeland Security being forced to post a warning against using the platform.

In a post to the government website, the DHS warned that "by convincing a user to load a malicious Java applet or Java Network Launching Protocol (JNLP) file, an attacker could execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system with the privileges of the Java plug-in process".

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