In the past year, Java has faced significant challenges stemming from the discovery of multiple vulnerabilities. These revelations have cast doubt on the strength of Java’s security measures as initially believed by Oracle. Consequently, Java has become a prominent target for cyber attacks, raising concerns among security experts about the wisdom of average users keeping Java installed on their devices. I concur with this perspective, as the risks associated with Java’s security flaws are increasingly apparent and warrant careful consideration.
In the security community, we have a concept known as “attack surface”. Your attack surface is any area of your system that could potentially be exploited by an attacker to compromise your system security. Obviously, the smaller your attack surface, the less opportunity there is for an attacker to exploit your computer. The great thing about Java is that it runs on a wide variety of computing platforms, making it possible for Java applications to run anywhere Java can be installed. The terrible thing about Java is that it runs on a wide variety of computing platforms, making it possible for Java vulnerabilities to run almost everywhere. This makes Java an ideal target for malware authors. And because Java installs its browser plugin by default, the only action a user needs to take to risk having their system infected is to visit a malicious or infected website. This is true even with fully up to date web browsers. That’s bad. Really bad.
Unless you absolutely need to have Java installed, it’s time to ditch it. To uninstall Java, open your Control Panel and select “Add or Remove Programs” (if you’re using Windows XP) or “Programs and Features”. Select Java and press “Uninstall”.
If you do need to have Java installed you should at least attempt to disable the Java browser plugin, which is where most Java vulnerabilities are exploited. The official Java website provides a walkthrough of how to disable Java in all major browsers here.
I disabled Java and now Facebook will not hardly run at all. My internet was slow before due to an old computer but now it is terrible. Should I enable Java again and how? The control panel doesn’t have an enable button.
Facebook shouldn’t be affected by Java in any way. If you want to try re-enabling Java you can find out how here:
http://java.com/en/download/help/enable_browser.xml
But that probably won’t solve your problem. You’d probably be better off resetting your browser to default settings as a first troubleshooting step.
I had already disabled Java from my Browser, and now I’ve removed it completely from my system ! Thank you for your e-mail and Blog.
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Thanks. This was helpful. Keep your newsletters useful and informative like this and I won’t unsubscribe!
Great info – and to think I nearly deleted the Zookaware newsletter without reading it !!
Great write-listing about Java. I have always been a bit nervous, but……………??
I have not deleted it yet because I’d like to know some times Java necessary?
Yes, some programs do require Java. If you don’t want to uninstall Java entirely you can still disable it in your browser by following the instructions here: https://www.java.com/en/download/help/disable_browser.xml