Sun and Blackdown Java: Applet privilege escalation

Background

Sun and Blackdown both provide implementations of the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

Description

Adam Gowdiak discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the Java Runtime Environment’s Reflection APIs that may allow untrusted applets to elevate privileges.

Impact

A remote attacker could embed a malicious Java applet in a web page and entice a victim to view it. This applet can then bypass security restrictions and execute any command or access any file with the rights of the user running the web browser.

Workaround

There are no known workarounds at this time.

Resolution

All Sun JDK users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/sun-jdk-1.4.2.09"

All Sun JRE users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/sun-jre-bin-1.4.2.09"

All Blackdown JDK users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/blackdown-jdk-1.4.2.03"

All Blackdown JRE users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/blackdown-jre-1.4.2.03"

Note to SPARC and PPC users: There is no stable secure Blackdown Java for the SPARC or PPC architectures. Affected users on the PPC architecture should consider switching to the IBM Java packages (ibm-jdk-bin and ibm-jre-bin). Affected users on the SPARC should remove the package until a SPARC package is released.