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Safari update prevents unauthorized cookie access

updated 05:40 pm EST, Fri December 5, 2003

Apple Security Update

Apple today released ]

by MacNN Staff

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12/05, 02:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
Timely update

A quick update to a recently discovered problem that has not yet known to be exploited. I'm glad I use a Mac. Good job, Apple.

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12/05, 02:52pm | report spam | close Reply |
weeks ago

it took them weeks just to fix this.

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12/05, 03:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
That's it...

I'm switching to Fig Newtons

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12/05, 03:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
Mee too

Fig Newtons? Eh? Send me some too. :-P
Update went fine, no problems.

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12/05, 03:05pm | report spam | close Reply |
update

update went well, zero probs

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12/05, 03:06pm | report spam | close Reply |
RE: That's It

Oh for chrissake. One teeny problem and everyone jumps ship. Please...if you're gonna do it...umm, I'll see your Fig Newton and toss in 3 Oreos ;)

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12/05, 03:11pm | report spam | close Reply |
?

who cares

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12/05, 03:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
I'm happy...

We had a known issue... Apple fixed it... (one click and a reboot and bamb... all fixed)

What else can we ask for...

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12/05, 03:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
keep in mind

the dark side of the force (Microsoft) still has several hundred vunerabilities and exploits in NT, so don't complain that it took Apple "a few weeks" to fix the exploit. Besides- Apple needs to be careful after the suck a** 10.2.8 updates that rendered many g4s ethernet capabilities useless...

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12/05, 03:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
LOL

"prevent unauthorized access to a user's cookies"

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12/05, 03:38pm | report spam | close Reply |
no kidding

I discovered that we had a mouse at work, due to "unauthorized access to a user's cookies".

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12/05, 05:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
Then it's time....

to toss your cookies so we won't get any mice using unauthorized access. Besides, don't you need Virtual PC to get Access onto your Mac?

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12/05, 05:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
Apply the fix

Go ahead. But if she's a cutie she can access my cookies anytime she damn well wants

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12/05, 06:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
Restart

Why do we need to restart to fix a hole in an individual application? I know it will be necessary for big updates but I don't like having to restart every time *anything* gets updated.

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12/05, 06:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
restart my a**.

why not like restarting ?

heck it snot like os9, QUIT ALL APPLICATIONS that BUGS me.

heck you dont even have to install the update, wait till you NEED to restart and then install it

or heck dont use it, use microsoft internet explorer..

but again, ifyou're f****** worried about someone taking your cookies, install it, restart and shut up.

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12/05, 06:26pm | report spam | close Reply |
just install, stop whinin

why not like restarting ?

heck it snot like os9, QUIT ALL APPLICATIONS that BUGS me.

heck you dont even have to install the update, wait till you NEED to restart and then install it

or heck dont use it, use microsoft internet explorer..

but again, ifyou're f****** worried about someone taking your cookies, install it, restart and shut up.

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12/05, 06:38pm | report spam | close Reply |
I agree!

Many flavors of unix don't need to ever be shut off or rebooted just for an app. Most of the security updates for them are simply killing the process and starting up the new patched app/deamon/whatever. The system update system forcing you to reboot is way to MS like for me.

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12/05, 07:05pm | report spam | close Reply |
Sophisticated dialogue

Why not restart, well let's see

� it messes up downloading you have going on, even in apps other than Safari
� it messes up any services you're running, like FTP, web sharing, iTunes sharing, etc, interrupting other people
� I usually have at least one other user logged in to my computer under Fast User Switching, and while restarting gives you the option to force-log-them-out, it doesn't let me make sure all their open documents are saved (or even see if there are any)
� as above poster said, it should just be unnecessary on a unix system

But I *will* install the update right away, because
� it's a security fix, and I'm not a moron.

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12/05, 07:29pm | report spam | close Reply |
Restarting

I think it has something to do with the fact that the fix was probably in one of the web frameworks, not in an individual application (the same reason an IE fix under windows affects other apps because its a shared library).

Since its a framework, they'd still have to restart services and such that use it (and would they know what uses it?). And if Fred's FTP server or iTunes is using the framework, they'd have to be restarted. And then they'd be whining then.

Now, I'll admit I know little to nothing about underlying Cocoa programming, so I can't say whether they could install it without restarting or that they're being safe/lazy.

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12/05, 07:29pm | report spam | close Reply |
One more thing.

It blows my uptime. :(

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12/05, 07:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
Frameworks, not apps

Since the update touches webcore, it affects iTunes, Safari, and any other app that uses this core framework.

Restarting insures that the older, unworking lib is unloaded. The equiv on many modern systems is to leave apps running with the older lib until the apps in question are quit and restarted, but this has all sorts of fun implications.

Scott

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12/06, 12:56am | report spam | close Reply |
THANK YOU

Thank you Scott!

People need to remember that more applications use WebCore then simply Safari. There was a way to send you an email and have you simply open it and I could grab your cookies...

I also believe that if you are Unix savvy, you can install without rebooting. Considering this is a desktop OS, a simple reboot is the simplest method.

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12/06, 07:10am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Frameworks, not apps

Actually, it replaced the Foundation framework. This one is used by virtually everything running on your system. Still, in theory it would be possible to go to single user mode and then back to multi-user mode.

The problem is that this is not yet possible in a clean way in Mac OS X. You can do it, but some things aren't reinitialized or restarted properly.

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12/06, 10:54am | report spam | close Reply |
Restarting

Okay, so services used by other apps are updated, and everything needs to be restarted. I believe this is the case�kind of knew this already actually�but everything that's been said also makes me believe this *doesn't need* to be the case. It would be nice for Apple to fix this.

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12/06, 12:41pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Restarting

It would maybe save you 5 or 10 seconds. Virtually the whole shutdown and bootup process would have to be run again, so it would mainly serve uptime freaks. I doubt this is a priority for Apple.

We're not talking about things like IBM servers that need 10 or more minutes to reboot here.

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12/06, 06:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: restarting

Actually, it replaced the Foundation framework. This one is used by virtually everything running on your system. Still, in theory it would be possible to go to single user mode and then back to multi-user mode.

The problem is that this is not yet possible in a clean way in Mac OS X. You can do it, but some things aren't reinitialized or restarted properly.

But going to single user mode requires you to lose the network, kill most of your daemons/services/etc. So, it doesn't help keep your users connected, doesn't prevent you from losing your second logged in user, etc. The only thing it does is save your uptime, and perhaps a few seconds where you don't need to restart the entire kernel. Not exactly 'easy' or 'non-disruptive'.

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12/07, 10:20pm | report spam | close Reply |
Entertainment Bookmarks..

... my entertainment bookmarks are no longer the same after this patch. The items I had placed into the entertainment folder are no longer there and there are the standard corporate companies in that folder.

anyone else notice any issues with their bookmarks?

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12/08, 01:50am | report spam | close Reply |
Bookmarks

Nope. My Entertainment bookmarks are just the 4 I had previously.....not that I ever use them

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