Mac OS X Vulnerabilities Fixed
Published on 12 May 2006 · Filed in News · 197 words (estimated 1 minutes to read)Lest anyone think that I am ignoring the fact that Mac OS X has flaws, too, I’d like to mention that Apple just released updates to both Quicktime and Mac OS X that addressed a total of 43 separate security problems.
As noted in this report by Dark Reading (and this report by eWeek), Apple Security Update 2006-003 fixes flaws in the Finder, Mail, Safari, and other components. The Quicktime update brings the version to 7.1 and corrects problems in both the Macintosh and Windows versions.
It’s important to note that some of these flaws were particularly dangerous. As noted by Dark Reading:
The two affecting Mail, the operating system’s e-mail client, could result in a Mac being hijacked if its user simply views a specially-crafted message, Apple said in its alert. The bug in Apple’s Safari Web browser, meanwhile, can be exploited by drawing users to Web sites and duping them into downloading a malicious archive file.
The security updates are available via Software Update or directly from the Apple web site. I’ve already patched my system (my PowerBook G4) and haven’t seen any issues, although there have been some reports of problems from the updates.