The Members Forum

Apple today patched 27 vulnerabilities in Safari for Mac OS X and Windows, 85% of them critical bugs that could be exploited to hijack Macs or PCs.

Of the 27 flaws fixed in Safari 5.0.3 for Mac and Windows, four were patched by Apple two months ago in its iOS mobile operating system, and at least three had been addressed by Google in its Chrome browser as far back as mid-August.

Chrome and Safari share the open-source WebKit browser engine. Apple identified all 27 vulnerabilities it patched today as within WebKit.

Most of the vulnerabilities addressed in the Safari updates -- Apple also patched the older Safari 4 that runs in Mac OS X 10.4, aka Tiger -- were accompanied by the phrase "arbitrary code execution," which is Apple's way of saying "critical."

Unlike other browser makers, including Google, Microsoft and Mozilla, Apple doesn't assign severity labels to vulnerabilities.

According to Apple, the 23 critical bugs can be exploited by "drive-by" attacks that launch as soon as a victim browses to a malicious Web site.

Computerworld has the article HERE!