The New Nation - Internet Edition

Internet

Apple Inc. on Monday matched the patch count of last month's massive update, fixing 41 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X and updating the beta of its Windows browser to fix another.

Including Monday's fixes, Apple has patched approximately 200 bugs in the nine security updates it has issued so far during 2007. Four of the nine featured fixes for more than 40 different vulnerabilities. Security Update 2007-009 plugged holes in Apple's own code and that of some of the open-source components it integrates with the Tiger and Leopard operating systems. Nearly half of the 41 vulnerabilities -- at least 17 -- were marked by Apple as capable of "arbitrary code execution," which is the Cupertino, Calif. company's way of saying an exploit could conceivably result in malware infiltrating a Mac or enabling a hacker hijack of the machine. Apple does not rank its software mistakes, but other vendors, such as Microsoft Corp., usually label such vulnerabilities "critical."

Mac owners running Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.1, received fixes for flaws in CFNetwork, CUPS, Flash Player Plug-in, Launch Services, Mail, perl, python, Quick Look, ruby, Safari, Samba, Shockwave Plug-in, Software Update and Spin Tracer. Tiger, or Mac OS X 10.4.11, was patched for all the above save the Quick Look patch, but was also received updates for Address Book, ColorSync, Core Foundation, Desktop Services, GNU Tar, iChat, IO Storage Family, Safari RSS, SMB, Spotlight, tcpdump, and XQuery.