Opera lances 'extremely severe' jpg bug

Norwegian browser update guards against pillaging

Opera has published an update to its flagship browser software that addresses a raft of security bugs.

The version 9.64 update, released Wednesday, fixes a flaw that means maliciously crafted JPEG images can cause Opera to crash in such a way that arbitrary code gets executed. Opera describes the flaw as "extremely severe", and it's hard to disagree.

A vulnerability that means plug-ins might be abused to allow cross domain scripting also gets fixed. The upgrade also resolves a number of other, lesser stability and security bugs as explained in Opera's release notes here.

On a more positive note, the latest edition of the browser software adds support for Microsoft's Data Execution Prevention technology, which shipped with Windows XP SP2 (and later releases) as well as Windows Server 2003 SP1. ®