US Homeland Security says disable Java

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Are musicians especially vulnerable?
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We have all endured years of breathless warnings forwarded by well-meaning friends about some killer virus-or-other that would be the ebola of our computer or other tech device.
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But this time, it appears that the wolf really is outside the cyber door.
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The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, US-CERT, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a rare advisory on Friday, bluntly telling all computer users to disable Java in their web browsers.
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Java-maker Oracle says that a fix is coming "shortly." But, as of Sunday morning, there are no indications that the solution is clear, or that a way to universally apply it is close.
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It's certainly not the first time that computer users have been warned, by some tech guru or other, to disable Java. But this latest security issue rose rapidly to the highest levels of the government agency charged with protecting us, and that is nearly unprecedented. It was first reported by security researchers on Thursday, and within hours, it was deemed the most serious kind of threat.
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The problem is a vulnerability in the Java Security Manager, a flaw that an attacker could exploit to run code on a user's computer. Keystroke spyware is one possibility that would allow a monitoring entity to copy everything you type.
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Some prominent companies, not content to wait for a fix, have already moved to block possible exploits.
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Mozilla has enabled "Click To Play" functionality in Firefox for all recent versions of Java across all platforms -- it was previously enabled by default for older versions of Java.
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Apple just added recent versions of Java to its blacklist covering all OS X users.
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Nationally-syndicated radio tech guru Kim Komando is one of several who has posted step-by-step instructions on her site, explaining how to entirely remove Java from your computer.
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So, why is the Acoustic Americana Music Guide jumping in? Simple. Much of what musicians exchange or send us requires Java to read or view it. That tells us that the music community is especially vulnerable. And since most musicians use PayPal and have vital codes for account access in their computers, along with carefully built e-mailing lists, the damage from a hacker can be especially devastating.
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Use your favorite web browser to learn the latest, or to find a trusted source that will guide you through disabling or removing Java until it's safe to use it again.
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We believe it's more important to share this before we worry about updating news of performances or events. Be careful out there.
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