IT Java Security Bulletin
Important IT Security Bulletin
There are people and programs on the internet that seek to steal your private information. You don't always have to click on an attachment or a link to allow them to infect your machine. Recently these people have found security weaknesses in several popular and widely used programs. These new found weaknesses allow them to infect your machine just by you visiting a compromised web site. You have no way of determining if a web site has been compromised, nor that your machine has been infected. Traditional anti-virus programs are in-effective at preventing or cleaning these infections. These sites are targeting your login information to various web sites, especially banking sites.
In order to protect yourself, it is very important to keep your software up to date. Especially browser plugins. Keeping plugins up to date is not hard, but it can be difficult to know when they are out of date. Qualys has made available a product to check your browser(s) and computer for out of date software. Please take a minute to go to this website and install the plugin. It will scan your computer once per week and update the plugins as necessary.
Among the worst software offenders recently have been products from Sun/Oracle and Adobe (especially Reader). The Sun/Oracle product that is the most insecure is JAVA. The Department of Homeland security has recommended that people uninstall this product. Information on how to deal with Java is listed below:
For additional questions/concerns, contact IT via the Helpdesk!
Please surf safely!
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Information Technology
North Park University
Java Instructions
To UN-INSTALL Java
http://www.java.com/en/download/uninstall.jsp
To DISABLE Java
http://www.java.com/en/download/help/disable_browser.xml
If you wish to disable Java you will need to have the latest version installed.
Yes, this seems counter-intuitive, but we do recommend uninstalling completely.
If you are not running the latest version, you will not have the option to disable.
This is shown here:
To get the latest version of Java you can visit their site:
Browser Check
In order to protect yourself, it is very important to keep your software up to date. Especially browser plugins. Keeping plugins up to date is not hard, but it can be difficult to know when they are out of date. Qualys has made available a product to check your browser(s) and computer for out of date software. Please take a minute to go to this website https://browsercheck.qualys.com/ and install the plugin. It will scan your computer once per week and update the plugins as necessary.
Please Surf Safely