09 July 2007, 12:08

Java SE 1.6 Update 2 released

Manufacturer Sun has now released Update 2 for Java 1.6, which increases stability and fixes numerous bugs. The updates of Java runtime environments have also always closed security holes in the past. In the latest version’s changelog, however, Sun doesn’t explicitly identify any of the bugfixes as security vulnerabilities.

The changelog does, however, contain items which point towards possible security issues. One of the bugs on the list in classes2d, for example, deallocates previously released memory, which at least causes the virtual machine to crash. Sun has also fixed several bugs in classes_security. The remaining bugs listed seem to have more of a cosmetic nature. Several of the localised language editions of the previous version, for example, didn’t display some of the dialogues completely and truncated some of the texts.

Users should update to the current version – Sun has held back the details of resolved security vulnerabilities for some time in the past to give users time to update. After installing the new version it is advisable to deinstall the previous version of Java manually, as the Java installer merely adds the new version and Java applications may still access the older version regardless of the upgrade.