Opera fixes 'extremely severe' exploit

in brief Opera has fixed a critical security hole which enabled an attacker to remotely inject and run malicious code.

Opera's stronghold (Where the magic happens image by Andreas, CC 2.0)

Users of versions of Opera older than 10.53 on PC and Mac OS X were recommended to update their browser immediately, since Opera rated the vulnerability as "extremely severe". The browser update is available from the company's website.

According to Opera's security advisory, the update protected the browser from remote attackers making multiple calls to a document modification script and crashing the browser. This would allow them to inject potentially malicious code onto the user's system.

Opera also acquired Australian independently-hosted email company FastMail last week.