X

Apple Safari vulnerable to multiple attacks

Researcher warns that read- and write-access violations could crash the browser and another vulnerability could spoof the address bar in Windows.

Robert Vamosi Former Editor
As CNET's former resident security expert, Robert Vamosi has been interviewed on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets to share his knowledge about the latest online threats and to offer advice on personal and corporate security.
See full bio
Robert Vamosi

Safari users may be subject to crashes or interactions with an attacker's malicious site, according to a warning posted on Tuesday on BugTraq.

Researcher Juan Pablo Lopez Yacubian is credited with finding multiple vulnerabilities in Apple Safari 3.1.1 for Windows. Other versions of Safari may also be affected.

Among the vulnerabilities cited are a denial-of-service (crash) vulnerability caused by a write-access violation, a denial-of-service (crash) vulnerability caused by a read-access violation, and a third vulnerability that allows attackers to spoof the content contained in the address bar. A full write up can be found here .

In a separate mailing to Bugtraq, Juan Pablo Lopez Yacubian says he was also able to use a similar exploit to crash Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 5.

That said, the general workaround is not to use Safari 3.1.1 for Windows until Apple issues a fix. Versions of Firefox 2.x and Opera are recommended.