Opera 10.53 Patches Critical Flaw

Opera has recently patched a highly dangerous security flaw in its browser application through Opera version 10.53. In accordance with the reports obtained, by exploiting the flaw, cyber-criminals could remotely insert and execute malicious software on the victim's PC.

Said Team Manager Huib Kleinhout of the Desktop team at Opera, following the news of the security problem on April 27, 2010, the company has released Opera 10.53 to fix the said vulnerability. The new version contained the same make like Opera 10.53 RC1, he added. Softpedia published this on April 30, 2010.

According to security specialists, the flaw is a result of an error whilst any web page's document content is continuously modified like utilizing document.write (). This process, they say may lead to certain function call via memory that's uninitialized while a website visitor accesses a maliciously designed page.

Moreover, the vulnerability reportedly affects just Opera 10.52 on the Windows platform. However, version 10.53 is developed to serve not only Microsoft's Windows users but users of Mac OS X from Apple as well.

In the meantime, the update has been released only a couple of days following the delivery of Opera's first Release Candidate related to its not so important update of Opera 10.50. Previously, Opera discovered vulnerability in version 10.50 used on Windows, with which cyber-criminals could execute malware on a Windows PC. Secunia, the Danish security firm, issued an advisory related to this bug.

But as of now, in advice to Opera's users, the security experts stated that Opera 10.53 can be downloaded to obtain the latest browser version for Windows operating system. Further, users of Opera 10.52 are recommended that they must download version 10.53 at the earliest and deploy the update as a protection for their systems from harmful assaults. As mentioned, such assaults exploit the asynchronous content alteration as well as uninitialized memory flaw.

Meanwhile, a security vulnerability affecting Opera browser isn't something unknown. For, during October 2009, Opera developed a critical security patch that addressed three recorded vulnerabilities. One of them was a problem related to memory corruption as it resulted in execution of malicious code on end-users' computers.

Related article: Opera 9.1 Browser Introduces phishing Alert

» SPAMfighter News - 5/14/2010