There's a hole in Safari, dear Liza

The key is default configuration. That is firewall disabled, Safari automatically opening downloaded files, no webkit or Safari 4.0B, and a host of other things that are often changed over time. Using a stock installation, MacOS X is not the most secure by any means. However, if you have taken precautions and tricked your machine with the variety of tweaks and changes that have been recommended over time, you can go to some brazenly insecure sites and come away shaken only a little.

so one question not answered yet...was this on safari 3 or the new safari 4 beta? is the exploit open on both versions? maybe its already been patched in safari 4.
i didnt see that in any of the rules...

So many of you bashing Safari but as long as you are running Firefox that's OK. But running IE as an alternative? Using IE means supporting Microsoft. Microsoft virtually has a monopoly with Windows/Office which are some of the most profitable products available. Among others they even lobby governments to get their own way, and they do. IE is a good browser as are the others but there no way I will advertise it because of who owns it. The more support the others get, the better they will become and the technology will advance quicker for all.

"Massive amounts of applications are incompatible with it."

[citation needed]

"Before declaring Safari "less secure" then those browsers, it is important to note that the hole has been reported to Apple, who need only issue a patch to fix it."

I get the funny feeling this same courtesy would not have been extended to those other browsers in this post had one of them fallen first this year.

What applications? Ones that are standards compliant (being in IT you should know all about standards) or ones that aren't?

Only two browsers are fully standards compliant; Opera (I think that includes the latest version) and Safari.

And I don't see how Safari can be ugly when IE is a confusing mess and Firefox doesn't use a native UI.

isnt it "theres a hole in the buckey dear elijah"? that song from the 90's?

u ppl take urselves too serious, get off the matrix for awhile the real world ain't that bad.

The MacDailyNews link in the article above is from 2007. This year's Safari crack was by Charlie Miller:

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/20497/

And once again people like dastranger completely miss the point. Did you not read the part about need to have somebody sitting locally in front of the Mac and physically clicking a link in an email to get to the exploit in the first place?

Does that sound like a real life situation to you? Is a hacker going to call you on your phone and ask you if you're sitting on front of your computer and would you mind terribly clicking on the link he's going to send you in an email? Has that ever happened to you in real life?

Don't be stupid about this. Yes, there was an exploit found in Safari. No, it cannot be exploited in the real world. Not unless somebody sends it to you in an email and you decide to not only click on it, but then enter your admin password a couple times. That's called social engineering, and no platform is immune to that.

It's good to find holes in Safari so Apple can patch them. It's not good to spread ridiculous FUD about how insecure the Mac is when it's not even close to being true. Buy a clue please, thanks.