Oracle issues record number of patches

Oracle admins will be busy: The company issued 248 patches on Tuesday, its largest-ever release, according to one security vendor.

Five of the vulnerabilities have the highest severity rating according to the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), wrote ERPScan, a security company that specializes in SAP and Oracle systems.

Most of those vulnerabilities related to Java SE, Oracles’s platform for running Java applications on servers and desktops.

In a long advisory, Oracle recommended that admins patch immediately.

“Oracle continues to periodically receive reports of attempts to maliciously exploit vulnerabilities for which Oracle has already released fixes,” it said. “In some instances, it has been reported that attackers have been successful because targeted customers had failed to apply available Oracle patches.”

Many of the other fixes affect widely used products included Oracle’s Database and E-Business suite, wrote Eric Maurice, director of Oracle’s Software Security Assurance.

He didn’t indicate why Oracle has so many patches this time around, but the advisory credited many security researchers who found the flaws and their companies, including Google, ERPScan, HP’s Zero Day Initiative, Salesforce.com and Onapsis.

Business applications from Oracle and SAP have been probed more frequently by security researchers. While attacks are such systems aren’t common by hackers, it is expected there will be increasing interest due to the sensitive data held.

ERPScan said that Oracle usually averages about 100 fixes per quarterly update. But this was a huge one.

“It’s a record number of security issues patched by Oracle in one update ever, and the figures look like the record number of vulnerabilities patched by any vendor in one update,” ERPScan wrote.