More and more problems with internet security are being blamed on Java.
On Tuesday Apple company officials announced Mac computers belonging to Apple employees were infected with Java related malware.
Back in January the Department of Homeland Security advised computer users to disable Java on their Web browsers because of malware issues.
Exactly how big a threat is Java?
Cisco, a well respected worldwide leader in networking technology, has some strong data to support any fears about Java in their 2013 Annual Security Report . The report shows that of the top malware content types for 2012, Java exploits comprised 87 percent of total web exploits.
Don't think that these exploits only happen to folks browsing in bad neighborhoods. Another interesting statistic from the report is that online advertisements are 182 times more likely to deliver malicious content than pornographic sites.
There are numerous facts and statistics in the Cisco report to make the case for ignoring Java technology in the web browser.
What is Java?
Java as a programming tool and as a technology was perfect for the world wide web.
The promise of the web was was to be independent of the technology, it would work regardless of operating system or web browser. Java being platform independent, in theory works on all operating systems. Java allowed programmers and developers a way to deliver applications through websites regardless of what operating system or browser was in use by the end user.
One of the downsides of Java technology was that poorly written applications could really slow down a computer system and end users often had slow running computers and little understanding of what caused the problems as most times web pages delivered these mini applications transparently to the end users.
Java was first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. Sun Microsystems, a key player in several computing technologies, was acquired by Oracle in 2010.
The term malware refers to malicious software. Java technology, that once held the promise of delivering dynamic content to the web, is now synonymous with malware.
With so many security websites telling people that Java use is not needed for average web browser it looks like a downhill spiral for this once promising web technology.
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More on the latest malware and how to disable Java in your browser discussed in "Latest Apple malware attack points to Java"
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