With its fifth security update for 2007, Apple patches 17 flaws
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Blog: The most serious involves poisoned PDF files. The update also includes patches for Bind, Fetchmail, and GNU Screen.
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(InfoWorld) - Apple has released itsÂ biggest iPhone security update yet, fixing bugs in the mobile phone's browser, mail client, and Bluetooth networking server. The majority of the flaws do not appear to be critical, but the update fixes a larger number of bugs than theÂ first iPhone update, released July 31. Hackers have said that the iPhone's browser and mail clients are the most likely sources of software flaws, and this release bears that out. Apple fixed seven flaws in the Safari browser, two in the iPhone's mail client, and one Bluetooth bug with the release. The Bluetooth flaw could be the most serious -- Apple said that it could allow an attacker to run unauthorized code on the iPhone -- but because Bluetooth works over a range of just a few feet, the attacker would have to be standing near the victim for any exploit to work, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Network Security. Noted hacker HD Moore agreed that the Bluetooth flaw was serious. "The only bad issue here is the Bluetooth [flaw]," he said via e-mail. "I will start working on this tonight." Though there may be some technical limitations to what an attacker could do by exploiting this bug, it "could be a nasty remote exploit," he added. Earlier this week,Â Moore added iPhone hacking capabilities to the Metasploit hacking toolÂ that he develops. The patch also fixes some cross-site scripting and JavaScript flaws in the browser that could also be serious, Storms said via instant message. These flaws could be exploited to make the browser run unauthorized JavaScript code, he said. Mobile phone users typically cannot update their own software, but Apple introduced this capability in the iPhone, which uses the update mechanism in the phone's iTunes music player. iTunes checks for these updates once per week, so it may take up to seven days for all iPhone users to see these updates. Apple advises users to install the update immediately.
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Blog: This security update for Windows users piggybacks patches for Apple users.
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Apple yesterday released a 12.7MB security update that consists of several revised components including Apache, AppKit, HIToolbox, Kerberos, Postfix, PSNormalizer, Safari and Terminal.
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Apple on Thursday released a Security and AirPort update for Mac OS X that fixes vulnerabilities found in the company&#8217;s wireless drivers. Apple said the issues found were the result of an internal audit of the software drivers and that no known exploits exist for the issues addressed in this update.
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Apple has released a new security patch for QuickTime, its eighth update this year for the media player software.The update addresses three critical security holes in QuickTime, including a vulnerability that has been used in attacks by online criminals.The most critical of the flaws lies in QuickTime&#39;s implementation of the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), used to play audio and video over the Internet. The flaw was made public Nov. 23, and in early December&#160;attackers began exploiting the flaw in online attacks. By tricking victims into visiting a malicious Web site that exploited the flaw, hackers were able to install malicious software on the victims&#39; PCs.To date, these attacks have targeted Windows-based systems, but security experts say that Mac OS X users are also at risk to the vulnerability. Apple issued patches for both Windows and Mac OS X users on Thursday.The second critical vulnerability, which had apparently not been publicly disclosed , has to do with a flaw in the QuickTime Media Link (QTL) file format used by the media player. Security researchers have recently been looking at the way QuickTime works with these files as a potential source of new bugs.Apple also patched a handful of similar bugs in the way that QuickTime handles Adobe&#39;s Flash media format. The most serious of these flaws could let attackers run unauthorized software on the computer, much as the RTSP bug does, Apple said.With security researchers paying special attention to media format bugs, Apple has had to patch QuickTime frequently this year. Some of these updates have come just weeks apart. Apple last patched QuickTime on Nov. 5.&#160;
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Update for Mac OS X includes a number of fixes for zero-day vulnerabilities released as part of two high-profile bug-hunting campaigns.
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Apple issues patch for iTunes to prevent attacks. Also: Identity thief gets jail time.
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A patch program fixing more than 20 flaws in OS X has been released by Apple.
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Apple has released Security Update 2007-006 for the Mac OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.9.
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(InfoWorld) - Apple has patched a number of critical flaws in its QuickTime media player. With the 7.2 update, users can now view videos on the full screen with the QuickTime player, but the software also contains a number of critical security fixes. In total, Apple has addressed eight security vulnerabilities with the release, which was made public on Wednesday. Four of the flaws are due to memory corruption or integer overflow bugs that could cause the viewer to crash if QuickTime were used to view maliciously crafted movies or files. Another three critical flaws relate to design issues in QuickTime for Java. Attackers could theoretically exploit these flaws by posting malicious Java applets on a Web site, where they could then compromise a victim's computer. A final QuickTime for Java bug could "lead to the disclosure of sensitive information," Apple said in its security alert on the update. Also on Wednesday, Apple pushed out a new release of its iTunes music software that fixes "a minor problem with iTunes 7.3 accessing the iTunes Library," the company said. The QuickTime and iTunes updates are available for download by both Windows and Mac OS X users.
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As Apple continues to grow its worldwide market share and the company's products find their way into more business environments, attackers are certain to follow and create greater volumes of exploits aimed at vulnerabilities in the company's software, security experts contend.According to industry analyst firm Gartner, Apple shipped just over 1 million Mac OS X-based computers during the fourth quarter of 2007, a gain of 227,000 over the fourth quarter of 2006. The analyst firm reported that Apple's U.S. market share for 2007 jumped by 28 percent compared to 2006, rising to just over 6 percent.And with Apple CEO Steve Jobs stating at last week's Macworld Expo and Conference that the company has already sold 4 million iPhones and 5 million copies of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), its latest OS, since launching the products last year, the company's prospects look stronger than ever.However, malware researchers and industry analysts warn that as the sheer number of Apple end-point devices in use worldwide rise, so will the security concerns tied to the company's products."It's hard to get around market share. At the end of the day, malware writers don't care what operating system you are using; it's about whether or not you have valuable information on your machine and whether there is an opportunity to take advantage of it," said David Marcus, security research manager for McAfee's Avert Labs group."Microsoft Windows has been targeted so aggressively because it has a much broader deployment than the Mac OS," he said. "But the malware authors watch trends just like everyone else, and they know more people are considering a move to Apple, including government institutions and businesses; if it makes financial sense to go after that opportunity at some point, they will move in that direction."The Mac's vulnerabilities In some cases, attackers will seek to exploit vulnerabilities such as currently unpatched flaws in Apple's QuickTime multimedia player application. In other cases, malware writers will use threats based more on social engineering, such as with the MacSweeper rogue cleanup tool that appeared during Macworld Expo, the researcher said.MacSweeper serves as evidence that developers -- both credible and not -- have already begin to turn more of their attention to Apple platforms, anticipating Mac users' security fears, Marcus said. Although MacSweeper is pitched by its creators as a utility for cleaning malware programs and other unwanted software off of Mac OS computers, it has proven to do almost nothing of the sort, despite its $40 asking price.David Maynor, chief technology officer of research and consulting firm Errata Security, said that one area where attackers may seek to assail the Mac OS is via flaws found in some of the older open source libraries of software code used in the platform.Apple also typically lags in patching issues found in those code libraries, such as with the Samba networking protocol used in the company's Mac OS X.Even when the Samba open source community has created a fix for a known security issue, it often takes Apple three to four months to introduce a related patch for its products, giving any attackers looking to subvert Mac systems a lengthy window of opportunity to do so, Maynor maintained."If someone has a list of these open source security issues in the projects included in Mac OS, they could use that against OS X users," said Maynor. "Samba is a perfect example, as there is generally a large window there."A rise in underground malware activity Maynor said that he observed an increase in Apple-related activity in the underground malware research community last year around several previous QuickTime vulnerabilities."It's not that the number of Mac vulnerabilities is rising. If you look at their own security archives, you'll see that there were always a lot that were reported, but no one cared in the past," Maynor said. "One of the problems is that a lot of users buy into the misconception that Mac OS is more secure because of Apple's development process, but that's not really the case. Some people also feel that they are protected by Apple's smaller market share, but with more of these computers out there, more attention is being paid to it."According to officials with Lumension, a software vendor that specializes in vulnerability scanning and patching, Mac OS has actually had far more security flaws reported in the last year than Microsoft Windows. Don Leatham, director of solutions and strategy at Lumension, formerly known as PatchLink, said that Mac OS X had nearly five times as many vulnerabilities reported than Windows during 2007. He noted, however, that many of those issues were considered minor, and that the Microsoft Windows security problems were notably more critical.But Leatham agreed that publicly reported holes in Mac OS products tend to stay unaddressed longer than their Windows counterparts. "It's not always about the sheer number of exploits anyways; it's more about the speed at which real exploits are being created. That's what people will need to be worried about going forward," Leatham said. "If you get to the point where you have professional malware development kits being sold on the underground, as we have today for Windows, that's when there could be real problems for Mac. But we haven't seen any of those just yet."Leatham added that, as with other mobile devices, Apple's iPhone has yet to see any truly dangerous malware attacks. However, when Apple releases its mobile applications development toolkit for the handhelds in February, he said it will be interesting to see if anyone tries to take advantage of the package to aim new threats at the phones."It would obviously still be a bigger deal if someone created a successful attack that targeted the Research in Motion BlackBerry platform, because those are the devices of choice in most businesses, but with 4 million devices sold by Apple, some of these handhelds are already finding their way into the enterprise," said Leatham. "iPhone has been considered very safe thus far because of Apple's rigorous applications white-listing approach, but we'll be curious to see the security features open to developers in the new toolkit and whether it will attract the interest of any malware writers."Short-term safety, longer-term concern For now, Apple users likely have little to worry about, the industry watchers agreed. Even with Apple's dramatic market share gains, the majority of its computers are being purchased by consumers, and malware professionals are more concerned with trying to exploit Windows vulnerabilities to steal valuable data from business users, experts contend."We're nowhere near a tipping point where, from an economic standpoint, it will be a better strategy for attackers to target Macs vs. PCs," said Andrew Jaquith, an analyst with the Yankee Group. "People who write malware for a living are professionals, they want to get the best return on investment from their work, and there are still much higher returns to be found in the Windows space."We will probably see some opportunistic things being developed on the Mac side as the market share numbers increase, but it's still nowhere near the epidemic we've experienced with Windows," Jaquith said. "Mac is still a safer platform, although not necessarily a more secure one."
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Apple rolls out four patches as Microsoft scrambles to head off a zero-day attack. Also: Routers at risk.
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Several security features in the Mac's new OS are incomplete, say researchers.
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Mac OS X 10.4.8 fixes several flaws that could lead to remote code execution, the company says.
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Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday plans to release five security updates targeting flaws in Windows, SharePoint, Visual Studio and Microsoft's instant messaging clients.
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Microsoft Corp. today released an unprecedented number of software security updates to plug flaws in its products, including seven "critical" defects that it said hackers could use to hijack vulnerable computers running the Windows operating system.