Mac OS X Tip of the Week: Where are the &#169; and &#8482; symbols?
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You wonât find them on your keyboard, but theyâre in your system somewhere. Hereâs how you can easily access them.
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Office for Mac 2008 incorrectly assigns ownership of some files, Microsoft has confirmed, creating a potential security problem for businesses installing the new application suite.Joel Bruner, a Chicago-based Mac consultant, was the first to notice the ownership snafu. "[Microsoft] moved to Apple's Package Maker (.pkg) installer files, good news for the enterprise, [but] unfortunately, they've created all the packages to install most all of the files with the owner set to 502."In a shop where employees run with limited privileges -- a practice very common in an enterprise -- and IT is the only user with full administrative rights, Office 2008's ownership assignment means that a user who wasn't supposed to have complete control over those files actually does. In other words, whomever is assigned user ID 502 has full read/write access to Office's files."So let's say, Mr. IT installs this on a user's machine where the first user is the admin[istrator] (501) and the standard user is Joe User (502)," said Bruner in a post to his blog on Monday. "Well, when after all's installed, it will give Joe User (502) ownership of these folders and their installed contents:/Library/Automator/ (if it doesn't exist already) /Library/Fonts/Microsoft /Library/Application Support/Microsoft /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008"The screw-up could present a corporate security problem, at least internally, said Bruner, if that Mac's second, standard user -- user 502 -- decides to make changes to the folders and files by, say, deleting some or moving others.A Microsoft developer left a comment at Bruner's blog confirming that the company knows about the problem. "The MacBU (Mac Business Unit) is aware of this issue," said Erik Schwiebert, a software design lead in the group.Microsoft, however, did not immediately respond to queries about how it intends to correct the problem and what users can do in the meantime.Other commenters at Bruner's blog hesitated to blame only Microsoft, however. "The truth is that this is a long-standing flaw in Apple's Installer," argued someone identified as Not Required. "Maybe Microsoft should have known better, but maybe Apple should also have improved their installer years ago. Apple clearly hasn't cared enough about smaller developers to make a fix, so hopefully Microsoft has a high enough profile that something finally gets done."In a follow-up post also on Monday, Bruner added that all the Office for Mac 2008 files owned by user 502 are also erroneously set as executable. "Now tell me does '/Microsoft Office 2008/Read Me.html' need to be executable for you to look at it?" asked Bruner. "Tick, tick, tick, *ding*! No. It does not."
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Time to download patches again if you're a Mac OS X user. This time there are 31 security-related fixes for both Mac OS X versions 10.4 and 10.5.
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Recently posted document throws a little light on a key feature of the next edition of Mac OS X.
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Gareth Heyes has a new post today talking about one of the vulnerable values in the $_SERVER superglobal - PHP_SELF.   I thought it might be a good idea to gather a few test cases demonstrating the problem. Why PHP allows these URL's is beyond me and it wouldn't take much work to filter out these malicious URL's in the PHP code.   He provides four test cases to show how simple it is to abuse - one using a HTTP header, another pushing XSS through, the third mentions search pages and the fourth a direct code injection.   You can download the code here.
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Editor's note: This story was reprinted from Computerworld. For more of Computerworld's coverage of the Mac, visit its Mac Knowledge Center.
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roundup Plus: .Mac customers suffer e-mail glitches...IBM launches business research group...Verbatim to make discs with HP labeling feature.
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Microsoft offers Apple security advice &gt;&gt; Advertisement &lt;&lt;  ALERT: "How A Hacker Launches A Blind SQL Injection Attack Step-by-Step"!" - White Paper  Blind SQL Injection can deliver total control of your server to a hacker giving them the ability to read, write and manipulate all data stored in your backend systems! Download this *FREE* white paper from SPI Dynamics for a complete guide to protection! https://download.spidynamics.com/1/ad/bsq.asp?Campaign_ID=701600000004c29
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How big is that image? How many files nestle inside that folder? Mac OS X knows. And so can you. Learn how you can display information about the contents of folders, size of images, length of songs, etc. We reveal all in the Mac OS X Tip of the Week.
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MacCentral - As first reported by Macintouch last week, there's a new form of malware that specifically targets Mac OS X. Already dubbed "Opener," it's been confirmed by corporate anti-virus software maker Sophos Plc., which has posted details on its Web site, and has called the malware "SH/Renepo-A." Sophos describes the code as a shell script worm that specifically targets Mac OS X computers.
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Continuing the thread from yesterday. I got absolutely nowhere, some people suggested I use a smart playlist, missing the point that I'm a developer working on a podcatcher, not a user trying to use iTunes as a podcatcher. I'm sure it's an excellent way to subscribe to podcasts, but I have my own ideas how podcatchers should work, and I want to integrate them with other stuff I'm working on. Integrating with iTunes is proving to be quite a challenge, or maybe it's an art, we'll see.  As usual Mac users are superior sumbitches.  (Quoting the James Brolin character the first time we meet him in the third season finale of The West Wing.) Anyway, the search continues, I tried another more direct tack, and looked for glue for iTunes for UserLand, and bingo, there's a match, from 2001, a well-known Frontier programmer Sean Elfstrom, apparently converted glue for the Sonic SoundJam app that iTunes used to be, before Apple acquired it.  I installed the glue in the OPML Editor. It's daunting, for sure, but let's see what I can get working.
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Patch posted Apple has posted a Mac OS X Security Update that patches almost two dozen holes in the Unix-based operating system. The update incorporates fixes for AirPort, Apple Type Services, Finder, Installer, Security Framework, VPN and a raft of other, under-the-hood apps and utilities.â¦
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Don&#146;t like the names Apple created for the colors used in the Color Labels feature? Then just create your own. Find out how on the Apple Pro/Design/ site &#151; it&#146;s the first of a weekly series of Mac OS X killer tips. [Sep 15]
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Latest PEAR Releases:Testing_Selenium 0.4.0MP3_IDv2 0.1.4pearweb_index 1.16.10Validate_IE 0.3.0DB_NestedSet 1.4.0RC1
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John Lim has posted about an interesting bug he's come across when working with the output of two strings that should look the same:   Someone reported a bug in ADOdb, the open source db library i maintain. I went crazy for half an hour until i realised the problem.   According to him, "if you expect the above code to produce the same values, you are sadly mistaken". His example gives an interesting result for the first echo statement - not echoing the 9 in the first character like it seems would make sense. Check out his post for the code and try it out for yourself.
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Derrick Story writes for the O&#146;Reilly MacDevCenter, summarizing a Mac OS X Tiger preview recently presented to the O&#146;Reilly Mac OS X Conference by Apple product manager Chris Bourdon. [Nov 17]
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Exploit code for a patched flaw in the Mac OS X operating system was discovered over the weekend, which allows an attacker to gain full system access through flaws in the core of the operating system. Apple provided a fix for the issue in a security update issued last week.