Check out the Dave Matthews video here... http://www.videocodezone.com/videos/d/dave_matthews_band/crash.html ...yes, it will also "Crash" Safari ;)

Damn...

Damn.

Damn!

As long as I can remember, there have always been web sites that could cause browsers to crash. Hardly sounds like a big woop security problem to me (although clearly, I don't have the same exposure to Apple employees who've been around a good while, over beers, discussing the scenario of what-if Mac OS X was Windows... someone needs to grab a life with at least one hand and try to hang on tight).

The problem is that a LOT of Mac users try to persuade Windows users there are NO problems with OS X, rather than that the consequences of those problems are smaller.

S'funny that the thing everyone remembers about the Titanic is that it sank, but the compartmentalised hull design it pioneered was still better than what was before and has become the standard for ship design.

People like it when 'unbreakable' or 'unsinkable' systems break - presumably because most people have a bad grasp of risk, and thus translate it into 'thank god I'm on a good old single compartment vessel rather than one of these new unsinkable ships'.

(Although the flipside of the lesson is 'if you think you are secure, you may engage in risky behaviour and go full-speed through an ice-flow').

Ironically, if the Titanic *had* steamed full-speed through the iceberg instead of attempting to go around at the last minute (thereby striking the side of the hull), it's believed that it would not have sunk.

As you say, Jules, poor grasp of risk and avoidance techniques seems to be the key issue.

I clicked the link and saw the image (a Jag town car) just fine.

Safari 1.3.2 (v312.6) Osx 10.3.9

sadmachine, It shouldn't have, since you were using 10.3 (Panther), the story specifically mentions that the flaw only effects 10.4 (Tiger).

Well, being the curious me, I wanted to see what crashing the Finder means so I downloaded the car picture to my desktop using Firefox. Well, I forgot that I had turned on preview icons or something like that so as soon as the download was complete, my Finder went into infinite crash and re-launch. I panicked a bit and then realised I could use Terminal to remove the file. I pity the Mac user who doesn't know how to use unix commands though!

...what the significance of this is:

"they'd be mighty nervous dropping OS X as it currently stands into the orgy Windows swims in."

Seems to me anyone would be nervous about launching their creation into something like that. Lord knows the Windows developers feel that way!

"security issue" that Safari crashes due to a bug?

Why does Apple need to "respond" to it? They will no doubt respond to it by releasing a fix to this bug with the next incremental 10.4 update.

Once again, as with the "Apple does not have a security czar" angle, the entities who profit from security fears are pointing to things which are not actually security "flaws" in Mac OS X as "proof" that Mac OS X has security concerns. Stupid stuff like this makes me feel safer than ever with Mac OS X, because it is obvious they cannot point to an actual "real world" security threat.