Apple’s Safari browser may not be nearly as secure as it should be and according to a new study, it’s putting its users at unnecessary risk.
Researcher Juan Pablo Lopez Yacubian spent some time with Safari 3.1.1 for Windows recently and found that the browser suffers from a number of vulnerabilities that could create problems for its users. And although he didn’t test out Mac versions of the software, he did say that any Safari installation might also be affected.
Three major problems
According to the researcher, Safari suffers from three major vulnerabilities that make it subject to malicious code. These 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."
Unfortunately, Yacubian is unaware of any workarounds and said that the only fix is to abandon the use of Safari until Apple patches it. Versions of Firefox 2 and Opera were highly recommended.
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Reader comments (6) Jump to Add Comment
robertjamespaul
April 24th
6. safari is rubbish in comparison to firefox. ie7 isn't brilliant, but still does the job
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calcio
April 24th
5. I actually don't mind IE7 either - but that's my guilty secret so don't tell anyone...
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techkernow
April 24th
4. Does anyone still actually use Safari? Why?
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james
April 24th
3. Yeah I agree it was very sneaky of Apple to smuggle Safari onto people's machines like that. Why any PC-user would currently choose Safari over Firefox is a mystery...
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calcio
April 24th
2. The update thing was farcical - but I imagine that the exploits only matter if people actually use the Safari browser that they accidentally installed.
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nicolasmerritt
April 24th
1. I imagine all those people who have been pushed Safari as part of their iTunes update won't be pleased to see this.
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