Tech Shout!

Apple has just released nine patches for its Mac operating system. The newly-released patches address various security concerns that were found during the Month of Apple Bugs, and other updates that take care of Daylight Saving Changes. Apple has also released a pair of updates for running Java on Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4.

Five of the updates released by Apple for its Mac OS are based on the new rules that have begun this year that Daylight Saving Time will have a few changes. Basically in 2005, the United States Congress passed an energy bill that included extending Daylight Saving Time by about a month. Thus, beginning in March 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday in March and will end on the first Sunday in November. In other words, DST will begin earlier and end later during the year that it did previously.

The Apple Mac OS patches also reflect changes in time zones through the world, and also include some Java reliability and compatibility problems. Yet another update is meant for Final Cut Pro version 5.1.3.

Disk image files will now undergo additional validation before being mounted. This prevents a buffer overflow that is often caused by maliciously-crafted volume name. Then the UserNotificationCenter process will now stop its group privileges immediately after launching. This will prevent it being it from being exploited by unprivileged local users who wish to gain root privileges.

Two of the security patches are particularly important, according to Rohit Dhamankar, senior manager of security research for TippingPoint Technologies.

One of the patches addresses two iChat vulnerabilities. iChat is a popular chatting application. The flaw in iChat allows hackers to “social engineer” a user of iChat, which means that the hacker could convince the user to click on a bad link. The hacker could then gain control of the user’s computer.

The other patch takes care of a problem similar to iChat one, but this time it is through Finder, that could exploit Safari users in the same way.