Fortunately, once it became a problem the company responded quickly. Why Apple did not deploy these fixes before Mac users were victimized by criminals is unclear. Perhaps its public facing image of being invulnerable is the prevailing attitude within the company. This does make you wonder whether Apple takes security as seriously as it should.
Today’s release updates Java to version 6 update 31 which Oracle released for Windows, Linux and Unix on February 14th. This release comes quick on the heels of an in-the-wild exploit actively targeting Mac users, in one of the first cases of drive-by exploitation we have seen for OS X.
After leaving Mac users vulnerable for more than six weeks, Apple has finally released a new version of Java for OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion).