James Delahunty
21 Jun 2010 22:06
Opera has not given detailed information about four out of five security vulnerabilities it recently patched in the latest stable version of the Opera web browser. Of the five security problems that Opera 10.54 fixes, the only one that has been fully disclosed relates to a problem with font handling on Windows, which Microsoft has already patched.
Only the severity status of the remaining four has been disclosed; extremely severe, highly severe, moderately severe, and less severe. Thomas Ford, a spokesman for Opera, said that the company was honoring responsible disclosure practices.
Other browser publishers may not have been able to patch their browsers against related attacks either. Generally, security researchers and software vendors only fully disclose security vulnerabilities when there is a patch publicly available and easily applied.
The Opera 10.54 update also fixes several problems the browser has had with Macs, such as premature shut downs.