The Division of Birthplace Protection is encouraging people who use computer systems to turn off or remove the Coffee development language because of a serious security weeknesses.
The defect in Coffee 7 "can allow a distant, unauthenticated enemy to perform irrelavent code on a insecure system," according to a caution published Friday by the U.S. Pc Urgent Reaction Team (CERT).
Hundreds of an incredible number of customers and businesses may be affected.
Hackers could manipulate the defect to set up harmful software or viruses that could make customers susceptible to identification fraud or allow their computer systems to be utilized by "botnets" that could accident systems or be used to strike web sites.
"Note that programs that use the Internet Traveler web content making elements, such as Ms Office or Windows Desktop computer Search, may also be used as an strike vector for this weeknesses," the caution contributes.
DHS said it is "currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem."
Java was developed by Sun Microsystems, which Oracle bought in 2010. There's no indication when a security patch might be available, and Oracle had no comment Friday night, Reuters said.
Java allows programmers to write software using a single set of code that will run on almost any computer.
MacRumors reports that Apple has already disabled the Java 7 plug-in installed on Macs.
ZD Net first reported the so-called zero-day vulnerability. In a follow up, it showed how the flaw could be exploited.
