Oracle patches 88 vulnerabilities

Oracle will release 88 vulnerability fixes across hundreds of its offerings as part of a scheduled quarterly security update.

The fixes address flaws in its popular database servers, former Sun products, the Solaris operating system and the MySQL database, according to Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek. Qualys makes vulnerability management products.

Some of the patches affect multiple offerings.

Oracle's top priority is a fix for JRockit of Fusion Middleware, having earned a CVSS 2.0 score of 10 out of 10.

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System - CVSS - is an open standard method of rating IT security vulnerabilities.

"A large number, 33, of the 88 patches are for the most critical class of vulnerabilities, remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, which are software flaws that allow a remote attacker to exploit the targeted software without prior authentication," Kandek said.

"Compare this to last quarter's release, which had 16 RCEs in 78 patches. Of the mainstream software lines, only MySQL and the Siebel Clinic product are not affected by the RCE-type vulnerabilities."

Oracle will not update Java on Tuesday. The company releases fixes for that software on a separate schedule, with the last coming in February. That previous release closed a number of critical flaws, in particular the highly-publicised Flashback trojan affecting Mac OS X.

As usual, Oracle "strongly" recommends that customers apply the patches as soon as possible to thwart attacks.

"System administrators and users of all other software lines should be prepared to review the release with care next Tuesday," Kandek wrote.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com