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A Safari Zero Day Exploit
Dan Morrill
Contributing Writer
2007-06-12
 Security News RSS Feed
The good folks over at Larholm.com have developed a zero day exploit against the safari for windows browser that just requires a person visit a web site.
Out side of that, no user interaction is involved.
In going through the exploit, interesting, lots of work went into this, and I seriously doubt that they notified apple, so the usual disclosure route was not pushed out here. The way that they have stepped through the exploit, it looks plausible, but the test POC would have to be modified to make it malicious. Give the hackers about maybe 10 seconds to flip it around, and safari, and your PC no longer are yours. The logic behind this vulnerability is quite simple and the vulnerability class has been known and understood for years, namely that of protocol handler command injection. A browser typically consists of a multitude of different URL schemes, some of which are handled by internal functions and others that are handed off to external applications. On the OS X platform Apple has enjoyed the same luxury and the same curse as Internet Explorer has had on the Windows platform, namely intimate operating system knowledge. The integration with the originally intended operating system is tightly defined, but the breadth of knowledge is crippled when the software is released on other systems and mistakes and mishaps occur. You can still find references to the OS X proprietary URL protocols open-help-anchor: and network-diagnostics: inside the resource files for the Windows release. Source: Larholm This should not take very long to make it through the normal routes, actually surprised that the security folks are getting this earlier than is usual, thanks Larhom that they published early and shared with the rest of the world.
For those people making apps, the steps they took are the same steps that a good security should be taking with your code. Or that you should be taking with your code. Even then, the outside world is going to find things because not every vulnerability will be discovered.
Lets hope that there is a safari patch soon so that this is just "for educational purposes only".
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About the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both
civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management.
Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through
his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the
ITtoolbox blogging community.
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