New and Noteworthy: Apple DMG flaw not so serious?; Safari market share surges

Apple DMG flaw not so serious? SecurityFocus reports on the controversy surrounding a disk image denial of service potentiality in Mac OS X. "While the common wisdom in the security world is that crashes are exploitable, Mac programmer Alastair Houghton published his kernel-code analysis showing that this particular vulnerability is not. "In fact, all (the MoKB) has found here is a bug that causes a kernel panic," Houghton wrote in his analysis. "Not a security flaw. Not a memory corruption bug. Just a completely orderly kernel panic." Following the analysis, Secunia downgraded their severity rating of the vulnerability from "highly critical" to "not critical." Several other companies still have the vulnerability rated as critical. The actions follow a heated exchange between Houghton and the founder of the Month of Kernel Bugs (MoKB) Project, a person who identifies himself as only L.M.H. Because of the exchange, Houghton decided to spend three days analyzing the issue and had his final analysis checked by Thomas Ptacek, a security researcher and founder of Matasano Security." More.

Safari market share surges According to data collected by Market Share, Apple Computer's Safari Web browser continues to gain market share as its use continues to rise.  Safari continues to rank as third most used browser trailing only Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. "In November 2005, Safari's market share as measured by Market Share (Net Applications) was 2.78 percent.  In November 2006, Safari's market share comes in at 4.03 percent. To view Safari's growth over the past year, click here.  The rise from 2.78 to 4.03 represents a year-over-year growth of 45 percent (rounded to the nearest whole percent, actual rise is 44.96 percent) for the month of November." More.

Previously on MacFixIt

• Security Update 2006-007 (#3): General fixes; Startup problems (cont.); Device connectivity lost; Slow volume access; more
• MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo [Late 2006] (#8): Display flickering, video corruption (cont.)

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