Opera acknowledges security flaw

 

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By Hani Megerisi

Posted on 9 Mar 2010 at 14:05

Opera has acknowledged a security flaw in its browser, but claimed the risks of it being exploited are low.

The bug was discovered by Danish security firm Secunia, which marked the flaw as “highly critical” – the second highest threat in its five-tiered scoring system - and said it could be exploited to corrupt memory, crash the browser or execute attack code.

“Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code. The vulnerability is confirmed in version 10.50 for Windows. Other versions may also be affected,” the Secunia report said, advising users not to access untrusted sites so as to minimise the exploitability of the flaw.

Opera has admitted to identifying the flaw, but moved quickly to quell fears that it could be exploited in the wild. “We received new information which prompted us to look at it and we believe there is a theoretical possibility of a security breach... but it is highly unlikely,” said Tor Odland, communications director for Opera.

Opera is looking into the problem and will be publishing its own analysis on its security blog.