Oracle Improves Java Security – What It Means For End Users

About two weeks ago, Oracle published a blog post describing – and promising – to improve the security of Java. Since then, I’ve been asked a few times: what exactly did they say, and what does it mean for end users?

First, Oracle talked about how they’re now handling security patches. They pointed out how recent patches had, in fact, solved more security holes than previous patches. What’s more important to take away is that Java’s update schedule has been brought in line with other Oracle products: it will receive patches every three months, starting in October of this year. This should help get potential problems fixed more quickly before they are exploited by attackers. Of course, Oracle will continue to deliver out-of-band updates as needed for critical vulnerabilities.

Java has also been brought under Oracle’s Software Security Assurance policies. As part of this, for example, Oracle will now use automated security testing tools to prevent regressions and new issues from showing up when a bug is fixed. This is welcome news, as it means that bugs will be patched more quickly in the future.

Next, they discussed how they had been working to improve the security of Java as it is used in browsers. More important than the discussion of what was done in the past is what Oracle will implement soon: future Java versions will no longer allow unsigned or self-signed apps to run. It’s not clear when this will happen, but if it does, it will be a significant increase in Java security. It means that attackers will have to acquire or compromise a code signing key to get their Java applets to run: while this will not stop a truly determined attacker, less targeted attacks will fail. In addition, Oracle is also working to improve how Java processes revoked signing signatures, so that this process can be turned on by default at a later time.

For enterprise users, there’s good news too. Future versions will add support for security policies enforced by Windows itself, so that system administrators can set network-wide policies that can restrict or relax Java usage without having to set these per system. In addition, a new type of Java distribution – Server JRE – is being created specifically for servers running Java apps. This distribution will have several libraries removed to reduce the potential attack surfaces.

All of these changes are for the better – Oracle is acknowledging that there have been challenges when it comes to Java security in the past, and they’re working hard to improve it moving forward. We appreciate these efforts and hope that they succeed in reducing the threat from Java exploits, which is completely in line with Trend Micro’s goal of creating a world safe for exchanging digital information.

In the meantime, we strongly urge that users do their part to keep their Java installs safe: update to the latest version of Java. We earlier discussed how to secure Java in the blog post How to Use Java – If You Must.

Post from: Trendlabs Security Intelligence Blog – by Trend Micro

Oracle Improves Java Security – What It Means For End Users