TL;DR version: if you have Java 7 on your computer, update it. Now.

The Java programming language helped to make the Web popular in the mid 1990s by its invention of the Web applet. The idea was powerful and enabled complex programs to be automatically downloaded when you visited a Web page and run securely on your personal computer in a sandbox. The sandbox prevented any applet running in it from doing the things on your computer you would not want it to do — like accessing your files, sending email, accessing other computers on the Internet, or installing new programs.

If you've read any technology news in the past week you know that several very nasty security vulnerabilities were discovered in Java version 7 that can be exploited by attackers, allowing them to create applets that can execute arbitrary code on your computer.

The exploit applies to Java 7 and not to earlier versions of Java and only when that is used to run a Java applet in your browser. The problem does not affect the use of Java 7 on servers, in Java desktop applications, or embedded Java.

Today Oracle released a security alert to address the vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities are remotely exploitable without authentication and have the highest CVSS severity score of 10. Oracle recommends that their fix be applied as soon as possible — some exploits are already available in hacking tools like Metasploit, which means that relatively unsophisticated people can use them.

Java developers and programmers should download the latest Java SE JDK and JRE 7 releases from Oracle and users running Java SE with a browser should download the latest JRE 7 from java.com. Windows users can also use automatic updates to get the latest JRE 7 release.

You can test the version of Java available to your browser <a href="http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp">here</a&gt;.  Note that Google's popular Chrome browser does not support Java 7, so Chome users need not update Java unless they also use another browser, such as Firefox or Safai.

Oracle also changed the default security setting for Java to "High," which means that most users will need to approve Java applets before they run.

Image By: Sam Howzit

On Friday night, the White House finally responded to a petition calling for the Obama administration to build a Death Star by 2016. Although its almost 35,000 supporters claimed that the project would increase job opportunities and and contribute to national defense, the petition did not earn approval for three reasons (among many others, we’re sure):

1. The Death Star would cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000 to build.

2. The Obama administration does not condone blowing up planets.

3. The entire thing could be destroyed by a one-man starship.

For all the Star Wars fans out there who are disappointed by the decision, Paul Shawcross, chief of the Science and Space Branch of the Office of Management and Budget, has some words of encouragement:

If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star’s power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

And with that, we leave you with a picture of President Obama wielding a light saber on the White House lawn.

The Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery is pleased to announce the addition of two electronic collections for the UMBC community. ARTstor Digital Library provides access to over one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities and sciences. These images are hi-resolution and may be downloaded and used for classroom and research purposes.

ScienceDirect’s Freedom Collection contains the full text of over 1,700 social science, science, medical, and technology journals published by Elsevier. See the Library’s website for more information about these resources. Thanks to the Office of the Provost for its continued support of the Library.

A new post by UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller on Sabato’s Crystal Ball discusses the concept of election “drop-off” and why he expects it to benefit the Republican Party in the 2014 election.

Schaller explains, “‘Drop-off’ is the political science term for the decline in turnout between the high-water benchmark of presidential elections and other electoral moments” such as “midterm elections for both chambers of Congress” and “state and local elections…held in non-presidential years.” Between 1964 and 2010, the average drop-off effect was 14%, with election turnouts ranging from 54.2% to 69.3% in presidential cycles and from 41.8% to 55.4% in midterm cycles.

What effect does this have? Schaller writes, “It’s no mystery why Democrats generally perform better in presidential years while Republicans tend to excel in midterm cycles: Lower midterm turnouts tend to skew the electorate toward older, white and/or more affluent voters.” He concludes, “Democrats will need to employ new strategies to compel voters who disappear when the presidency isn’t on the ballot to show up.”

For discussion on this topic, see also Charlie Mahtesian’s Politico blog, which excerpted and linked to the piece.