While Microsoft, Mozilla and Google are laboring to finalize Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.1 and respectively Chrome 2.0, Opera is cooking
Opera 10.0, the next iteration of its proprietary browser. But at the same time, the Norway-based security company is delivering updates for its current release of Opera, namely version 9.6. In this regard, Opera 9.64 is now live and available for download. Opera 9.64 is a security upgrade designed for all end users running versions of the browser prior to 10.0 Alpha.
One important aspect of v9.64 is that the update will make Opera play nice with security mitigations specific to Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. “Starting with this release, Opera on Windows supports the security measures "Data Execution Prevention (DEP)" (available in Windows XP SP2 and newer) and "Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)" (available in Vista and newer),” revealed
Claudio Santambrogio, Opera QA Desktop Test Manager.
By taking advantage of the default layers of protection introduced in Windows by Microsoft, Opera is ensuring that its browser offers even more security to end users. In this context, Opera 9.64 boosts the security offered to users running the browser on top of Vista SP1 and XP SP3, which by default offer mitigations such as DEP and ASLR. In addition Opera has also enhanced version 9.64 in relation to the way the browser handles trusted certificates.
“These security measures are a kind of second line of defense once an application runs into a serious fault, which would normally cause it to crash sooner or later. Of course that should just not happen in the first place, but you can never completely rule out programming errors. Depending on the exact nature of the fault, an attacker can sometimes exploit it and try to take over your system. DEP and ASLR make that a lot harder,” Santambrogio added.
Opera 9.64 is available for download
here.
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