Will Opera 12 continue to be updated?
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blackbird71 last edited byAs there hasn't been an update for Presto Opera now since July last year, I suspect that even security updates are history.
I'm sure Opera never went that long in the past with no updates.
Quite why Opera haven't confirmed or denied that support for 12.16 has actually ended is a mystery to me.
They're still not prompting 12.16 users to upgrade to a later version, which implies that it is still supported, but the lack of any update for so long would imply the reverse IMO!
There are three kinds of security issues to which a software's developers will respond:
- Those they find themselves in testing and development
- Those privately (and usually discreetly) reported to them
- Those listed in public lists like US-Cert, Sans, Secunia, etc.
Obviously, we have no insight into the first and second, unless the developers choose to share that information. Normally, such sharing occurs via an announcement of a patch or a necessary preventive action that needs to be taken until a patch is deployed.
Which, for Old Opera, leaves the third category. To my understanding, there have been no publicly revealed security flaws since June of 2013 (which announced a hostile penetration of Opera's servers that led to 12.15 being re-released as 12.16, just in case the certs in the 12.15 downloads had been tampered with). Hence, Opera's 12.15/16 versions are as up to date security-wise as the public record would require.
While Opera's Presto developers have either left Opera or been reassigned, that does not mean Opera wouldn't attempt to release a patched Old Opera version if the need arose. They've already stated that feature development for Presto browsers is at an end, and that security fixes would be supported if the need arises. They've further announced that they will not forcibly update Old Opera users to New Opera until they believe the New Opera version is feature-mature, and will security-support Old Opera until then. Either one takes them at their word on this, or chooses to believe they're lying and consciously putting their Old Opera users at risk. As with most things, the choice is up to you.
OS: Win 7-64 SP1 -- Web Browsers: Opera 12.14u, 11.52; Firefox 27; Qupzilla 1.4.2; IE8
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A Former User last edited by
Thanks blackbird, that's very interesting.
IIRC most of the patched security flaws in Opera releases in the past seemed to be as the result of privately reported issues.
It's certainly good to know that there are no outstanding issues in the public domain that haven't been addressed!
I'm just surprised that it's been so long now since the last update, I don't remember as long a gap as that happening before.
Of course now I'll be made to look an idiot by them releasing Opera 12.17 tomorrow!
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christoph142 last edited by
I've been using opera browser for a long time, and now remain loyal to it.
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stng last edited by
Keep in mind, that EVERY security fix after 12.14 had brings more problems than actual fixes.
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jito463 last edited by
Can you provide a link (or a reference of some kind) to the problems in 12.16 stemming from the updates? I'm curious to see what you mean. I haven't noticed any issues myself with 12.16, but obviously I wouldn't if it's a security exploit, rather than a bug.
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blackbird71 last edited by
Can you provide a link (or a reference of some kind) to the problems in 12.16 stemming from the updates? I'm curious to see what you mean. I haven't noticed any issues myself with 12.16, but obviously I wouldn't if it's a security exploit, rather than a bug.
The problems were scattered through various threads in the old My Opera forums, and they were instability or memory-leak kinds of issues that certain users experienced. Some could be confirmed by some (but not all) other users, some never could be. They were not security-related. Sometimes the problems were site-specific, but not always. At the time, I helped in a few of the threads to try to aid trouble-shooting, but nothing clearly causal ever appeared, apart from version number - that is, 12.14 would work, 12.15/16 would cause the user problems to appear.
The 12.15 development work occurred during/just-after the time-frame of the Opera Presto personnel redirection/displacement upheaval, and some folks speculated that Opera's best Presto developers might not have been fully engaged in the update, so that it wasn't as well crafted or debugged. Again, that's only speculation, and I have no knowledge of its accuracy. In any case, whatever code was issued in 12.15 appeared as well in 12.16, since it was merely a re-release of 12.15 with re-verified certificate signing.
My personal opinion is that if 12.16 is working fine on your system, there's certainly no reason to revert back to 12.14. By nature, I'm very careful and conservative about updating to any new version (such as from 12.14 to 12.16) if there's even a smell of instability, if the potential 'gains' are small. To me, that seemed to be the case there. But if you've got it (12.16) and it works on your system, by all means, keep it.
OS: Win 7-64 SP1 -- Web Browsers: Opera 12.14u, 11.52; Firefox 27; Qupzilla 1.4.2; IE8
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stng last edited by admin
Can you provide a link (or a reference of some kind) to the problems in 12.16 stemming from the updates? I'm curious to see what you mean. I haven't noticed any issues myself with 12.16, but obviously I wouldn't if it's a security exploit, rather than a bug.
I mean broken compatibility with a web-sites. Details: https://forums.opera.com/topic/550/prweb-crashes-opera
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vikingen last edited by
Can you provide a link (or a reference of some kind) to the problems in 12.16 stemming from the updates? I'm curious to see what you mean. I haven't noticed any issues myself with 12.16, but obviously I wouldn't if it's a security exploit, rather than a bug.
The problems were scattered through various threads in the old My Opera forums, and they were instability or memory-leak kinds of issues that certain users experienced. Some could be confirmed by some (but not all) other users, some never could be. They were not security-related. Sometimes the problems were site-specific, but not always. At the time, I helped in a few of the threads to try to aid trouble-shooting, but nothing clearly causal ever appeared, apart from version number - that is, 12.14 would work, 12.15/16 would cause the user problems to appear.
The 12.15 development work occurred during/just-after the time-frame of the Opera Presto personnel redirection/displacement upheaval, and some folks speculated that Opera's best Presto developers might not have been fully engaged in the update, so that it wasn't as well crafted or debugged. Again, that's only speculation, and I have no knowledge of its accuracy. In any case, whatever code was issued in 12.15 appeared as well in 12.16, since it was merely a re-release of 12.15 with re-verified certificate signing.
My personal opinion is that if 12.16 is working fine on your system, there's certainly no reason to revert back to 12.14. By nature, I'm very careful and conservative about updating to any new version (such as from 12.14 to 12.16) if there's even a smell of instability, if the potential 'gains' are small. To me, that seemed to be the case there. But if you've got it (12.16) and it works on your system, by all means, keep it.OS: Win 7-64 SP1 -- Web Browsers: Opera 12.14u, 11.52; Firefox 27; Qupzilla 1.4.2; IE8
Very interesting, blackbird71. I'm using 12.16 now, and for the most part it works okay, but now I can't log in at one website I use sometimes. I also get the occasional crash, but not often.
Perhaps I should consider 12.14? How much less secure is 12.14?
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blackbird71 last edited by
... Very interesting, blackbird71. I'm using 12.16 now, and for the most part it works okay, but now I can't log in at one website I use sometimes. I also get the occasional crash, but not often.
Perhaps I should consider 12.14? How much less secure is 12.14?From: http://www.opera.com/docs/changelogs/unified/1215/
Fixes and Stability Enhancements since Opera 12.14
General and User Interface
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Fixed an issue where the search bar's default engine could be overridden by third-party apps.
Security
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Fixed a moderately severe issue, as reported by Attila Suszter; details will be disclosed at a later date.
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Added safeguards against attacks on the RC4 encryption protocol; see our advisory. (http://www.opera.com/security/advisory/1046)
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Fixed an issue where cookies could be set for a top-level domain; see our advisory. (http://www.opera.com/security/advisory/1047)
12.16, of course, is the same as 12.15 in all relevant areas.
General note to nobody in particular: I'm coming to hate markup language with a passion! Formatting within a quote is a royal pain!!!
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vikingen last edited by
Three security problems fixed, but how big a threat they were I have no clue. It wouldn't be fair to ask you analyze it, so I'll just say thanks for the quote.
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Off topic:
I agree this new formatting language (Markdown?) is rubbish! This is not a proper forum. It takes proper forum software to be a proper forum. This is more like writing in the sand. -
stng last edited by
"Three security problems fixed, but how big a threat they were I have no clue. It wouldn't be fair to ask you analyze it, so I'll just say thanks for the quote."
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Those three security problems are pretty minor and irrelevant. For an example, there is NO critical vulnerabilities between 12.14 and 12.16 such as buffer-overflow thats allows remote code execution.
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Opera 12.14 with its marginal market share wouldn't be targened anyway.
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