Java trouble, again!

As many of you have read by now, there's a new Java vulnerability making headlines, and I've gotten a lot of emails asking about it. Back in April of last year I wrote a blog post about the Flashback trojan, and one of the security suggestions that resulted from the whole ordeal was to disable Java in your browser (and possibly elsewhere). If you'd like to read more about the current issue that has a lot of folks concerned, check out this link:

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/homeland-security-still-says-no-java-1B8000547

And below, excerpted from my post last April, are instructions for disabling Java in Safari, Firefox, or system-wide:

...consider turning off Java altogether in Safari. Go to Preferences in Safari, and click on the Security tab, then uncheck the Enable Java checkbox:

UPDATE: Several folks have asked how to disable Java in Firefox. Here are the instructions:

Open Firefox's preferences, go to the General tab, and then click on the "Manage Add-ons..." button in the lower right corner. That will open another Firefox window, showing a list of plug-ins, one of which is the 'Java Applet Plug-in'. Disable that plug-in, and you should be good to go...

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To be even more secure (and aside from your browsers), you could disable Java system-wide. I don't recommend this, however, unless you're positive you don't use any Java-based programs (CrashPlan uses Java, for example). If you want to disable it, you will need to go to your Applications folder, find the Utilities folder within it, then a program called Java Preferences. Open that, and uncheck all the boxes under the General tab, as seen below:

Unfortunately, the online world just seems to get riskier as it gets more powerful. Keep reading your daily news to learn of the latest threats, and check back here for the details...