Number of Appleâ€™s patches has grown in comparison with last year

22nd December 2007

The company Apple released another set of patches for operating systems Mac OS X, the latest versions.
The December set of patches includes about three dozen patches for various components of software platforms for Mac OS X 10.4 (code-name Tiger) and Mac OS X 10.5 (code-name Leopard). Vulnerabilities, in particular, were found in the address book, the module CFNetwork, CUPS printing system (Common Unix Printing System), the plugin Flash Player, iChat, components associated with system upgrades, etc.
Most of the found holes in theory can be used by an attacker in order to crash applications or perform an arbitrary malicious code on the remote computer. Also, some vulnerabilities allow gaining unauthorized access to information stored on the victim's computer.
Along with patches for Mac OS X, the company Apple released a patch fixing holes in beta-version of the browser Safari 3. The problem is relevant only for computers running under Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista. The hole in theory allows performing XSS- attacks (Cross-Site Scripting) on remote computers.
The growing number of updates means the growing interest for Apple software platforms from hackers, and experts on computer security.