UPDATE: Sun says a Java security threat, the subject of an earlier Australian report, has been patched.
A news story from ZDNet Australia based on a CERT advisory identified vulnerabilities within Sun's Java Runtime Environment. However, Sun representatives said the company has already patched the flaws and that there are no known exploits circulating in the wild.
Sun on Friday released a new version of Java SE 6 Update 2 that it says addresses all current vulnerabilities.
The Australian CERT advisory published on Thursday, an update of an original advisory posted on 4 June, summarises two Java Runtime Environment vulnerabilities and also provides links to Sun's patches.
The Java Runtime Environment vulnerabilities cited in the article were first reported by Chris Evans of Google's security team in October. He reported them to Sun, then to the public on 15 May.
One flaw demonstrated in Evans's advisory shows an integer overflow in a Jpeg image. Documented in CVE-2006-2788, this affects Sun Java Development Kit (JDK) before versions 1.5.0_11-b03, 1.6.x and 1.6.0_01-b06.
A second demo shows a local file being opened via the BMP image parser. This was documented in CVE-2006-2789 and affects Sun Java Development Kit (JDK) before versions 1.5.0_11-b03, 1.6.x and 1.6.0_01-b06 on Unix and Linux systems.
Sun spokeswoman Jacki DeCoster recommends that consumers go to Java.com and download Java SE 6 update 2, installing the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment. Additional information about the specific patches related to these vulnerabilities can be found on the company's SunSolve site.
Talkback
The latest version of Java is 6-update 2. Can everyone fix the problem by upgrading to this version, or must we uninstall the JRE completely?
Come on, don't just shout *Fire!* in a crowded room!