Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: wdolson

ORIGINAL: geofflambert
The travel advisory still holds. There are still Japanese soldiers hiding out in the jungle who think the war is still on.

Somehow 90 year old soldiers who have been living off the land for nearly 70 years with 70 year old weapons don't really scare me too much.

Bill

Their bayonets are rusty and that makes for a really nasty wound. Besides, Gilligan, the Skipper too, Mary Ann, Ginger, the Howells and the Professor are still out there, aren't they?

ORIGINAL: msieving1

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

Has anyone else heard about this? The feds are warning Americans to disable Java as it supposedly has lots of security issues related to identity theft. Is this a matter of the feds having some axe to grind with Oracle, or something to do with keeping the population in fear, or is there a serious threat of being hacked?

As far as I know, I only need Java for Tracker. However, since AE is my life (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit), I don't want to disable it if not absolutely necessary.

Can anyone enlighten me here?

Apparently, the DHS warning applies to Java in web browsers, not stand-alone Java applications.

Not being tech savvy, I don't know if this applies, but I just had my yahoo.com account (free) hacked; I use this account for my Firefox homepage. Fortunately I have not used this site for email in years and did not have any contacts saved, but the hackers did access my sent file and spammed those addresses. I've changed all my passwords and swept this account clean. Are there any other step I should take?

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

Running a Java App is ok. The problem is in the Java Update program, which is used to open a path into your machine. It's a VERY insidious little loop. As long as you don't auto update, but rather go to the Oracle website & update, you should be fine. The problem is that Oracle sets up a back door in Java to advise on updates, and then sets a change in your Registry to allow it. This allows the hacker with the know-how to back end any machine running it.

There are two things about this that concern me.

1) This auto-update exploit, isn't that analagous to the old IE vulnerability? If so, how could they (the Java folks) possibly NOT foresee this?

2) Why are we learning about this from Homeland Security? [X(][X(]

Maybe Oracle has been blacklisted as a terrorist organization?

ORIGINAL: jetjockey

ORIGINAL: msieving1

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

Has anyone else heard about this? The feds are warning Americans to disable Java as it supposedly has lots of security issues related to identity theft. Is this a matter of the feds having some axe to grind with Oracle, or something to do with keeping the population in fear, or is there a serious threat of being hacked?

As far as I know, I only need Java for Tracker. However, since AE is my life (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit), I don't want to disable it if not absolutely necessary.

Can anyone enlighten me here?

Apparently, the DHS warning applies to Java in web browsers, not stand-alone Java applications.

Not being tech savvy, I don't know if this applies, but I just had my yahoo.com account (free) hacked; I use this account for my Firefox homepage. Fortunately I have not used this site for email in years and did not have any contacts saved, but the hackers did access my sent file and spammed those addresses. I've changed all my passwords and swept this account clean. Are there any other step I should take?

Happens a lot. So much, in fact, I have to wonder if the problem is more on Yahoo than an end user. Happened to me, and for the life of my I have no idea how it happened. And it did NOT happen on my Hotmail account, which I also access from the same PC.

Yahoo is notorious for being porous to hackers. Hotmail was for a time but it seems Microsoft has cleaned it up.

Symantec has informed their customers that they are protected if they use auto updates for the anti virus and that Oracle has a patch for this.

Not being totally into pc techs I'm more a mainframe guy but I've got Java7 update9 along w/ several Java 6 updates installed. Should I update to the current Java manually - the popup did come up to remind me but I've not actually run it as when it popped up I wasn't attached to the internet & I normally only have the setting where it sends me a reminder/popup to do it not actually do the update for me. I'm having a problem where I can't change the default open a file w/ a certain program & wondering if this may be part of the problem. I can change to some defaults like notepad/word/adobe but not the one I need to even when I go into browse & tell it which program (it doesn't take for some reason). I did do some Windows & Adobe updates the other day. Any other possibilities to see about on changing what program a file will open w/ ?

If you have Norton you should be fine. They just sent an email confirming that they have protection now for the holes in Java. You really can't live without Java.

ORIGINAL: crsutton

If you have Norton you should be fine. They just sent an email confirming that they have protection now for the holes in Java. You really can't live without Java.

True, but you must still have the latest update:

Java version 7, update #11 (jre 7u11) or version 6, update #38 (jre 6u38) @ (http://www.java.com)

Both Norton and Oracle seem to prefer version 7, especially now that Oracle intends to discontinue support of version 6 shortly; you will still be able to download the latest update, for now at least.

Since Tracker seems to require version 6, after I uninstalled version 6 and then installed version 7, I reinstalled version 6; Tracker still works fine, but I am crossing my fingers. My computer recognizes version 7 and Tracker is directed to use version 6; everyone's happy.

One other note: WRT PCs I am just a duffer, at best. If I've erred, I hope to be corrected before my computer explodes.

My work around is to copy the JAVA 6 installation into my tracker directory and then point tracker to this copy of java and then uninstall all versions of JAVA and then INSTALL the new updated JAVA (Java version 7, update #11 (jre 7u11))