While the Java and .NET deserialization issues were limited to third-party libraries, having deserialization issues impact Ruby itself greatly increases a hacker's attack surface.

This is not a problem specific to Java serialization, a specifc .NET formatter or any specific formats such as JSON, XML or Binary," researchers say.

But while Oracle is addressing the issue in Java, serialization also affects other programming environments like .NET, Ruby, and others, where the issue remains dormant.

Learn about serialization in Java with our comprehensive tutorial. We provide examples to help you understand how serialization works.

In programming languages, serialization is the process of converting data to a binary format for storing it or for sending it over the network. Deserialization is the reverse of that process.

Last month, Oracle's chief architect, Mark Reinhold, said during a conference Q&A that one of Oracle's long-term goals is to change the way Java handles object serialization. In fact, he called the ...