A security vulnerability in Apple’s popular web browser, Safari, has been discovered, dating back to the early days of Intel-powered Macs. The vulnerability was brought to light thanks to a presentation by Oligo Security researchers at the Defcon hacker conference. Here’s Apple’s response…
Apple Announces Plan to Patch the Safari Vulnerability
The researchers who discovered this 16-year-old flaw in Safari revealed that the vulnerability allows websites to communicate with local network services and execute code on users’ devices by targeting the 0.0.0.0 IP address. Interestingly, this issue has been known since 2006.
Apple has stated that they will address this vulnerability with the Safari 18 update. However, only macOS Sequoia beta users currently have access to this update. The same vulnerability has also been found in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Both Google and Mozilla have acknowledged the issue and officially announced that a fix will be rolled out soon.
Apple rejected Microsoft's offer of Bing as the default browser. It said it could not compete with Google.
This vulnerability could allow hackers to gain access to your device and run malicious software. While waiting for the new Safari version, you might want to consider using a different browser for your safety. Additionally, it’s important to keep your operating system and other software up to date and to regularly scan with antivirus applications.
What do you think about Apple’s plan to patch this vulnerability? Do you find it surprising that it took 16 years for this flaw to be discovered? Feel free to share your thoughts with us.
