JAVA, THE PROGRAMMING language which launched a thousand security problems, is 20 years old.

Java was originally designed by James Gosling of Sun Microsystems in 1995 as a universal language which would overlay a virtual machine on any platform to run its ‘applets’.

The language, mostly based on C# and C++, has gone on to be the basis of set-top boxes, watches, modems, routers, in fact anything that requires an operating system, as well as an estimated 2.1 billion low-level mobile devices running its embedded version, Java ME.

In fact, the story of Java is a story of a piece of software that outgrew its proprietary model and was relicensed in 2007 under GNU.

But what next for Java? It’s showing its age, and more and more hackers are finding ways to exploit it.

Java required 167 security vulnerability patches in January 2015 alone, and that’s not just a headache for system administrators