New flaw crashes Safari

A blogger has identified an apparent flaw in the Apple's Mac OS X graphics display engine, ImageIO, that will crash the company's Safari Web browser and other system applications, including the Finder. The flaw [link: warning, will crash Safari], posted by DrunkenBlog, crashes anything using the Mac OS X ImageIO API including Finder, Preview, and applications based on Webkit and WebCore -- Apple JavaScript/HTML display engine for Safari and other applications. ImageIO reportedly hangs during an EXIF routine, and images of the specified type are already floating around on the Web according to the blogger, who comments on Apple's general security standing. "I haven't met anyone within Apple that's been around awhile who wouldn't admit over beers that they'd be mighty nervous dropping OS X as it currently stands into the orgy Windows swims in, so I'm always amused at what shows up around the Web, and less amused by the pundits feeding it to them." The report notes that the bug -- which only affects Tiger and won't crash Camino or Firefox -- has been reported in Apple's system; however, as with most security issues, Apple has not publicly responded.

by MacNN Staff