Technology news and Jobs 
VIRTUALISATION Safari 4.0.3 addresses stability and security issues
VIRTUALISATION Safari 4.0.3 addresses stability and security issues | Safari 4.0.3 addresses stability and security issues |
|
| by Stephen Withers | |
| Wednesday, 12 August 2009 | |
  
Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
Specific bug fixes identified by Apple correct issues that could prevent users from logging into the iWork.com site (Apple's service for sharing iWork documents), or cause the display of web content in greyscale instead of colour. Stability improvements are claimed for Top Sites, third-party plug-ins, and the handling of the HTML 5 video tag. As for the security fixes, Safari 4.0.3 for Windows patches a flaw recently addressed by Mac OS X 10.5.8 in which maliciously crafted EXIF data could trigger arbitrary code execution. The new version of the browser also fixes a graphics-related issue that could be used to the same ends. Four other issues affect Apple's browser on both platforms. A wider range of Unicode characters are now flagged in the address bar to alert the user of the possibility of spoofing. One of the problems with international domain names has always been that character sets may contain individual characters that are visually similar to those in other sets yet are treated as distinct. This can allow the registration of look-alike domain names. WebKit's handling of the pluginspace attribute has been tightened to avoid information disclosure to a site that includes a malicious plug-in dialog. The processing of floating-point numbers has also been improved to avoid a buffer overflow that could have been used by a malicious site to cause the execution of arbitrary code. And finally, the Top Sites feature has been tweaked so that only user actions can lead to a site appearing in the Top Sites view. Previously, a malicious site could use automated actions to promote one or more pages into the Top Sites list. Apple notes that known fraudulent sites have never been allowed onto the Top Sites list, reducing the risk that the vulnerability could have been used in phishing attacks. Safari 4.0.3 is a 40M download for Leopard, 26M for Tiger, and 27M for Windows. It is available via Software Update (Apple Software Update on Windows) or from Apple's Support Downloads site. |
Tags
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
