Patching and Apple - Java issue
At the other end of the spectrum is Apple. There is a java issue (CVE-2008-5353) which was reported to Sun and fixed by Sun back in December. For some reason the fix for this was not included in the recent security updates all Mac users would have received recently. Why not?
Actually thats what we asked, but the response was a tad disappointing and not at all enlightening. In the mean time Mac users are vulnerable to a simple driveby exploit. The POC code was posted on Milw0rm a couple of days ago. You can read more on the issue here and here. The page on the first link has a link which will execute the /usr/bin/say command using a java applet it demonstrates the issue nicely.
It won't be long before it is being used in live exploits. Apple, please fix it, soon. In the mean time people disable java.
Update
Brian Krebs wrote about this issue as well, you can read it here. The main story doesn't really say anything new, but he has done some additional analysis and mapped the differences between Sun fixing a java issue and Apple releasing the update, which is interesting. You can find that here.
Mark H
Patching and Adobe
We all remember the beating Adobe received back in February regarding the JBIG2 issue. The patch was very slow in coming and basically the response was, well, pretty pathetic.
Now as any incident handler knows one of the most important steps in the incident handling process is the lessons learned. So it was very refreshing to see Adobe follow this principle and learn from the incident. They have in the last few days announced what they are doing. Which you can read here and here.
They'll do a quarterly patch cycle and fit it in with the second Tuesday of the month. Based on the response earlier in May it looks like their new processes are working so far. We'll have to see how it pans out throughout the year.
Mark H - Shearwater
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