Following up some recent patches to Samba, the open-source file-sharing system compatible with Windows file sharing, Symantec found some disturbing results: At least one *NIX variant, Mac OS X, is still vulnerable.
The heap-corruption vulnerabilities affected Samba 3.0.25rc3 and earlier versions, and exploit code was quickly made available. Symantec says that the current, fully-patched version of Mac OS X 10.4.9 runs Samba 3.0.10, originally released in 2005. It does not run by default, but does run if the user activates Windows Sharing. Symantec calls exploitation of this version of Samba on OS X "fairly trivial."
It's possible for Mac users to obtain the source code and roll their own version of Samba 3.0.25, but this isn't a task for the average Mac user. Symantec recommends disabling Windows Sharing.
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Apple reminds me of IBM sometimes.
Apache or OpenSSH releases a new version...all the Linux distros patch within a week or two and all the other guys get around to it later....this Samba issue is a pretty case example.
Apple needs to reduce the time it takes to retrofit open source patches back into OS X.
In August 2006, KF released a OSX Fetchmail buffer overflow advisory. When did the creators of Fetchmail release fixes back into the open source world? July 2005!
It took Apple a little over one year to retrofix a very important patch back into OS X.
In March of this year, Apple released a huge metapatch. This megapatch included a update for OpenSSH which fixed several serious security issues. When were these issues fixed and released by OpenSSH? Nov 2006!
In my mind, this is a ticking time bomb waiting to deal Apple a serious security blow one day [if they don't stay on top of this issue].
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