Apple drops a bundle of patches in Software Update 2009-001 and Java updates

Stephen Withers
Friday, 13 February 2009 11:14

IT Industry - Market

For example, ClamAV 0.94.2 was released on 26 November 2008, fetchmail 6.3.9 on 16 November 2008, and SquirrelMail 1.4.17 on 4 December 2008.

And as for X11, it appears that some of the patches delivered in Security Update 2009-001 for Mac OS X 10.4.11 were actually released as long ago as 3 April 2007, although they were incorporated in Mac OS X 10.5.6. Other vulnerabilities found in both Tiger and Leopard were fixed in X11 7.3, released on 11 June 2008.

Other issues affect networking (AFP, Network Time, remote Apple Events, SMB), Apple Pixlet Video, Certificate Assistant, printing (including CUPS), and certain other system functions.

Security Update 2009-001 is available in six versions for 10.4.11 (Intel), 10.4.11 (PowerPC), 10.4.11 Server (Universal). 10.4.11 Server (PowerPC), 10.5.6 and 10.5.6 Server.

The updates can be downloaded via Apple Support Downloads or by using Software Update. File sizes range from 43M to 213M.

Apple also released security and compatibility updates for Java on Mac OS X. Java for Mac OS X 10.4 is now on release 8, while Java for Mac OS X 10.5 goes to Update 3.

Both releases update the Java Web Start and Java applet components, and both include changes to address serious security issues that could allow a malicious Java applet on a web page to cause the execution of arbitrary code with the current user's privileges.

There are some broader security statistics in the news, so please turn to page 3.