

My Plea to Oracle: Axe Java Applets - thexploit
http://thexploit.com/blog/my-plea-to-oracle-axe-java-applets/

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BjoernKW
Nobody except the German tax authorities. As a company in Germany you have to
hand in your tax statements electronically. In order to do so you have to go
through some weird Applet-based authentication process.

The sooner Oracle axes Applets the sooner the German tax authorities will have
to axe their completely messed up software as well. This will take some time,
though.

While I completely agree with the underlying sentiment, you can hardly say
Applets aren't used anymore.

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thexploit
Yikes!

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samworm
_"I can attest that nobody uses applets anymore"_

<http://danielrapp.github.com/mcstats-analysis/>

Minecraft disagrees - you know, one of the best selling games of the last year
or two... 9.4m copies sold. And according to this analysis 33% of people play
it in an applet. To me this sounds absolutely insane. But we should never
underestimate the insanity of the general populous.

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thexploit
Small percentage but still interesting. Although if this functionality didn't
exist, would it really be missed? I suppose these are the people playing on
guest computers/at work. Wonder how many of those 33% of people have an up-to-
date Java plugin?

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smackfu
Nobody uses Java Applets just like nobody uses Windows XP and IE6.

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ageyfman
Java applets are necessary for folder uploads. Right now, only 1 browser
supports folder uploads, and that's Google Chrome. All others allow single or
multi-file uploads, but not folders. This is a HUGE problem for some medical
and document-management use cases. Until folder uploads work natively in other
browsers (IE7+, FF, Safari), applets are not only necessary, but essential.

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thexploit
Yes, this is somewhat unfortunate and someone should really light a fire under
the HTML5 implementors. However, I wouldn't call it essential since you can
archive/zip/tar a bunch of files and upload them all at once and do the
processing server side.

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kyllo
Oracle ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), one of the major business software
products that Oracle sells to corporations that they do IT consulting for, is
fully Applet-based. They're not going to dump Applets because Applets are the
framework of their core product.

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chayesfss
Yea I'm sure Oracle will do this based upon your plea...not... Do you have any
idea what would happen to the internet as we (the world, not just yourself) if
we all just stopped supporting applets? I don't think you do.

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thexploit
Yea, I have an idea of what would happen ... we'd have a ton less people
getting their boxes easily owned because they visited some webpage and happen
to have some old technology installed that they don't ever even use.

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cpressey
If they never use it, then a better solution is for browsers to ship with
applets disabled. Or without an applet plugin at all -- if you need it, go
install it at your own risk.

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ttt_
As long as there isn't such a thing as PrinterSockets for the browser, Java
Applets are the only way we can provide printing services for our clients,
because a browser can only send documents for printing and not byte streams,
which is what we need in order to use termic printers for adhesive labels.

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csense
Why are there so many security vulnerabilities related to Java applets?

I always thought that Java's been specifically designed to sandbox untrusted
code, and applets are mature technology: They've been around for 15+ years.

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jordan_clark
Just disable the plug-in in your browser. Problem solved.

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thexploit
Agreed. Except the common user likely doesn't even know it's enable or how to
disable it. Thankfully, Firefox disables by default now.

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jfoutz
Off by default is a good step to take today. I can't see eliminating them, but
this makes a lot of sense.

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renanbirck
Most Brazilian banks still use Java applets - which sometimes don't work in
newer browser versions and have odd bugs with 32-/64-bit compatibility.

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dagw
Last I checked many Norwegian online banking and credit card payment systems
use applets.

~~~
thexploit
Somewhat ironic considering you'd think banks would do a security assessment
of the technologies they use.

