Sun and Blackdown both provide implementations of the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Java Runtime Environment (JRE).
Both Sun's and Blackdown's JDK and JRE may allow untrusted applets to elevate privileges.
A remote attacker could embed a malicious Java applet in a web page and entice a victim to view it. This applet can then bypass security restrictions and execute any command or access any file with the rights of the user running the web browser.
There are no known workarounds at this time.
All Sun JDK users should upgrade to the latest version:
# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/sun-jdk-1.4.2.08"
All Sun JRE users should upgrade to the latest version:
# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/sun-jre-bin-1.4.2.08"
All Blackdown JDK users should upgrade to the latest version:
# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/blackdown-jdk-1.4.2.02"
All Blackdown JRE users should upgrade to the latest version:
# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-java/blackdown-jre-1.4.2.02"
Note to SPARC users: There is no stable secure Blackdown Java for the SPARC architecture. Affected users should remove the package until a SPARC package is released.