News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

April 23, 2006

security

May arrives early

Posted Apr. 23, ’06, 7:27 PM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Security

Security Protocols Maybe it’s just the skeptic in me, but am I the only one that read Tom Ferris’ security bulletin’s carefully? (See Dan’s post about these advisories.) He had six in total (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). In the first, he has the very dangerous warning:

and or to execute arbitrary code on a targeted host

However, other entries contain lines like:

and or may allow for an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the targted host

Now, which is it? There is a world of difference between crashing (a minor inconvenience) and arbitrary code execution (very dangerous). If he’s not sure about some, how do we know he’s sure about the rest? Is this all conjecture on his part? Good security dictates that even if there are crashing bugs in an application, it doesn’t lead to the whole system being compromised.

I’d like something a little firmer than an irresponsible may. It’s no wonder all the news outlets jumped all over this.

Update: Dan, doing a little investigative work forwarded me this email from Tom.

Hi Dan,

All of the issues allow arbitrary code execution, besides one of the .TIFF image flaws. As for the BOM issue yes it is exploitable… There are multiple ways of triggering the crash, and controlling memory. Apple has been aware of these issues since the first of the year, and will be releasing a security update very soon. I just wanted to make the public aware of these issues, just incase someone else has found these flaws and maybe taking advantage of them.

Hope this helps..

Tom Ferris Researcher

Ignore the may.


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