Apple Inc. on Thursday issued an update for Java in its OS X Lion and Snow Leopard operating systems to thwart attacks by hackers.
The patch came shortly after Oracle released an out-of-band or emergency patch to fix bugs in Java 7 that hackers had already started exploiting, PC World reported.
It was the first Apple update for OS X Snow Leopard - which still runs a third of Macs - since June 12, PC World said.
However, PC World said that if Apple follows past practice, it will continue to update only a small group of native components for Snow Leopard, including iTunes, Java, QuickTime and Safari for a few more months.
Apple still maintains Java 6, which is bundled in OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). Java 6 is also offered to users of OS X Lion (10.7) when they have to run Java applets.
But Apple is no longer responsible for Java 7, which Oracle controls.
"The OS X patches for the three Java 7 flaws, then, were produced by Oracle and shipped last week alongside the fixes for the Windows version of Java 7," it said. — TJD, GMA News


