'People who are using Mac OS X 10.5 and older won't get the Java update, which means they will remain vulnerable unless they update their operating system or upgrade their hardware,' noted Mozilla. Java may be on some Lion systems: Users are prompted to install the software the first time they try to run a Java applet.īecause Apple no longer supports OS X 10.5, or Leopard, its predecessor Tiger or any older operating system, it doesn't ship patches for Java to those users. While Apple no longer packages Oracle's Java with OS X - it stopped that practice with Lion in July 2011 - it continues to issue Java security updates to people running Lion as well as 2009's Snow Leopard, or OS X 10.6.
Mozilla has fixed the bug and will roll the patch into Firefox 12, which is set for release April 24.įor those reasons, Mozilla instituted only a partial block of the Java plug-in, limiting it to copies of Firefox running on Macs powered by OS X 10.5 or earlier. 'This means that even if someone updates Java on Mac, Firefox will continue to say an old and vulnerable version is installed.' 'There's a bug in Firefox that prevents it from reloading plug-in metadata after an update,' acknowledged Mozilla.
