On Thursday, Apple released its fifth major security update for Mac OS X. The release fixes 17 vulnerabilities, about one-third of which leave the door open for hackers to commandeer a Mac remotely.
Unlike other 2007 security updates, Apple's Thursday release did not patch any vulnerabilities stemming from the Month of Apple Bugs project. And most of the bugs were ranked less than critical on Apple's rating scale.
About half of the vulnerabilities identified in Security Update 2007-005, for example, do little more than lead to possible attacks that cause the affected component to crash. Only five of the flaws would let attackers put malicious code on a victim's computer.
Dangerous Bugs
The CoreGraphics bug is among the most serious vulnerabilities patched in the latest security release. By enticing a user to open a maliciously crafted PDF, an attacker could trigger an overflow that might lead to an unexpected application crash or arbitrary code execution. The Apple security update addresses the issue by performing additional validation of PDF files.
Also of note is a dangerous flaw in iChat, Apple's instant-messaging service. A buffer-overflow vulnerability exists in the code used to create iChat port mappings on home NAT gateways.
By sending a maliciously crafted packet, an attacker on the local network could trigger an overflow that could lead to an unexpected application crash or arbitrary code execution. The update addresses the issue by performing additional validation when processing data packets in iChat.
More Back Doors
In certain circumstances, an implementation issue in Alias Manager will not show identically named files contained in identically named mounted disk images. This can leave some wiggle room for attackers.
By enticing a user to mount two identically named disk images, an attacker could mislead the user into opening a malicious program. The update addresses the issue by performing additional validation.
In other flaws, a cryptographic weakness in fetchmail could lead to the disclosure of fetchmail passwords. Meanwile, a local user might obtain system privileges through a format string vulnerability in VPN, and a file-handling issue that exists in texinfo might allow a local user to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user running texinfo.
Mac users can download the security updates from Apple's site or by using the Mac's built-in update tool.
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