Apple smashes patch record with gigantic update

Computerworld - Apple on Wednesday patched more than 130 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, smashing a record the company set last March when it fixed over 90 flaws.

The update for OS X 10.6, a.k.a. Snow Leopard, and OS X 10.5, better known as Leopard, was Apple's first since September and the seventh for the year.

Calling the update "huge," Mac vulnerability expert Charlie Miller pointed out that even with a staggering 134 patches, there were plenty of flaws still around.

"Apple releases huge patch, still miss all my bugs," said Miller in a tweet late Wednesday. "Makes you realize how many bugs are in their code, or they're very unlucky."

Continue reading the story by Gregg Keizer

Apple delivers record monster security update

Apple today patched 92 vulnerabilities, a third of them critical, in a record update to its Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems.

Security Update 2010-002 plugged 92 holes in the client and server editions of Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6, breaking a record that has stood since March 2008 . The update dwarfed any released last year, when Apple 's largest patched 67 vulnerabilities .

More than 40% of the vulnerabilities patched today, 37 out of the 92, were accompanied by the phrase "may lead to arbitrary code execution," which is Apple's way of saying that a flaw is critical and could be used by attackers to hijack a Mac. Apple does not assign ratings or severity scores to the bugs it patches, unlike other major software makers, such as Microsoft and Oracle .

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Download the patches from Apple:
Apple OS X 10.5.X users
Apple OS X 10.6.X users
Microsoft Windows Bonjour users

Adobe patches 12 Flash bugs, 3 caused by Microsoft

Adobe on Thursday patched 12 vulnerabilities in Flash Player, including three it inherited from faulty Microsoft development code and one that hackers have been exploiting for at least a week.

In a security advisory published Thursday afternoon, Adobe briefly spelled out the dozen vulnerabilities, 10 that were pegged as potentially leading to hijacked systems or with hackers executing their own malware on a machine.

The vulnerabilities affect the Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Flash Player. Still to patch: the Solaris edition.

Flash Player 9.0.246.0 and 10.0.32.18 for Windows, Mac and Linux can be downloaded from Adobe's Web site. Alternately, users can use Flash's built-in automatic update mechanism to grab the new versions.

Read the full story by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld US

iPhone Virus: What You Need to Know

"The iPhone's security flaws were laid bare at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas yesterday, and now the smartphone-clutching public has boiled itself into a frenzy. But how serious is this supposed iPhone virus, and what can be done to protect your iPhone from infection? Here is what we know, and why you probably shouldn't worry.

The Attack Comes Through SMS

The iPhone virus exploits a memory corruption bug in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages. If your phone is the target of a hacker, you will receive a text message with only a square in the message -- that's when you know someone is digging his heels into your sand. But according to Eric Everson, founder of security firm MyMobiSafe, it takes a total of 512 text messages to actually get under the hood. The other 511 may float in like ghosts, totally undetectable to the user, but if at least one of them is deleted, the hack is incomplete. Turning your iPhone off or sliding it into Airplane Mode are quick and simple ways to escape the bull's-eye."

Continue Reading reading the full story by Brennon Slattery at PC World

UPDATE: You can now download the fix for this from iTunes