The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s recent announcement of a major security flaw in Java was the latest in a series of shots across the bow of the venerable computing platform. The department advised folks to disable Java in computers, tablets and phones that access the Internet (for some, a task easier said than done). While Homeland Security has often been accused of hyperbole in its announcements, this is one case where we believe the warning message was accurately delivered.
For one, Java runs on just about every personal computer (and other devices) in the world that accesses the Internet. That’s a lot of folks with a security flaw. Moreover, this particular security flaw allows hackers to access all data on the computer or device.
Oracle, the owner of Java, released a patch within a few days. Many, however, continue to doubt the security of the product. After all, they fixed the identified security issue, but what about unidentified issues? And how long was this issue being exploited prior to being identified? By most accounts, this bug has been present for at least 18 months (some claim it has been present for several years).
The security issues have been so worrisome that Apple actually blocked the latest version of Java from running on the most recent versions of its Mac operating system twice in the past month. This basically rendered a number of software programs unusable.
Even with all of its issues, Java serves a good purpose. It was developed to allow applications to run on disparate computing platforms, for example, Macs, PCs, Unix and even mainframes. For that purpose it has been very successful.
Java was started at Sun Microsystems in the early ’90s and widely used by other vendors in their product sets. It had always been viewed as an egalitarian product, again, with the idea of enabling applications to be developed to run on multiple platforms. In fact, Sun converted Java into an open source product in 2006.
Some thought Sun’s merger with Oracle in 2010 would cloud the future of Java. To date, however, Oracle continues to support the original goals of Java. While nothing particularly revolutionary has occurred, Oracle continues to announce improvements and enhancements to the product. Furthermore, many if not most educational institutions begin their programming instruction using Java. This is a powerful statement to its longevity. We don’t expect Java to go away any time soon.
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John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. He can be reached at johnagsalud@yahoo.com.
