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Written by Daniel
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 10:42 |
Apple patches vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, rolls out update for Tiger, quashes bugs in the Windows version of Safari, but no sign of Leopard update
By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
November 15, 2007
InfoWorld
In one of its biggest update days in memory, Apple late Wednesday patched 41 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, rolled out the long-anticipated (and likely last) update for Tiger, quashed 10 bugs in the Windows version of Safari, and upgraded a slew of other applications.Only an update to iPhoto, one of the Apple-branded applications bundled with Macs, is relevant to users running Leopard, the new operating system introduced three weeks ago.
Both Security Update 2007-008 and the update to Mac OS X 10.4.11 include the 41 fixes, 15 of which could be considered critical by virtue of Apple's designating them capable of "arbitrary code execution," its terminology for an attack that could result in a compromised Mac. The more than two dozen remaining patches fixed flaws that could crash the system or applications, poison the Mac's DNS cache, allow malicious Web sites to conduct drive-by downloads, or let hackers steal information or look at files on the hard drive.
Many of the vulnerabilities were in the third-party components included with Apple's operating system, noted Andrew Storms, nCircle's director of security operations. "The majority of the bugs found in OS X and on the iPhone have dealt primarily with third-party applications shipped with Apple's operating systems," said Storms in an e-mail. "Typically, the third-party applications are open-source projects; examples represented here include BIND, bzip, and Kerberos. It's good to see Apple put forth these fixes as many of these updates fix critical security flaws."... More Comment in the Forums |
