Well, it's not like there's a guarantee you WILL get it. All of these are just precautionary steps. Personally I think it's better safe than sorry - drawing something isn't quiet as important to me as the information on my computer so that's why I've disabled java and took heed. But if you're willing to take the chance, then that's obviously your call.
Anyway, I think there was a little mix up - this vulnerability in java has been around for eight years but it's really only since roughly August of last year that it's been exploited I believe. Since then they released a patch, in October of last year, but it was incomplete. According to
Oracle's website, there's going to be a security patch for Oracle products on the 15, but I don't know if that will cover the problems in Java fully. Java specifically gets a patch on the 19th of February. And yes, you can get more than just ransomware from it. Here's an idea of how big the threat is; so big,
that Apple has simply disabled the use of Java on some of their products and won't allow people to use it again until there's a fix.
There's been more coverage on this since yesterday, if anybody is still a little unsure. Just so you know that it's not just Bonus and I worrying about it!
This was posted yesterday, along with
this,
this, and
this which have all been posted in the last couple of days. So it's not a small isolated problem at all.