Oracle Issues 36 Patches

The Critical Patch Update is among the smallest since Oracle began quarterly updates.

Oracle Corp. Tuesday issued its second critical patch update for the year, this time patching 36 security holes in its products – including several that can be exploited remotely by an attacker without authentication.

The most serious of the flaws affects Oracle relational database management system running on Windows, that received a Common Vulnerability Scoring System rating of 7.0 out of 10. This flaw can be exploited remotely by attacker sans a password or user name for authentication.

The CVSS standard, which was created by the Homeland Security Department's National Infrastructure Advisory Council, was adopted by Oracle in October. None of the other vulnerabilities addressed by the Oracle release – besides the flaw affecting the relational database management system - rated higher than 4.2.

There are 13 security fixes for the Oracle Database. In addition, 11 security fixes were issued for Oracle E-Business Suite and Applications, five for Oracle Application Server, one each for Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Secure Enterprise and the Oracle Collaboration Suite. There are also four fixes for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise.

The release is among the smallest patch loads in several months. In January, Oracle's critical patch update addressed 51 flaws, while the company's critical patch update last October contained more than 100 security fixes. The next Critical Patch Update is scheduled for July 17.

Eric Maurice, manager of security in Oracle's Global Technology Business Unit, wrote on the company's security blog today that the company's decision to release quarterly updates has improved product maintenance for customers.

"The predictability provided by the - Critical Patch Update - mechanism is very important to Oracle customers," he wrote. "It results in enabling customers to plan for the CPUs and install them in their normal maintenance windows, to avoid undue interruptions in their business-critical systems."

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International