Impact: Visiting a malicious website may allow cross-site scripting

Description: Safari’s security model prevents JavaScript in remote web pages from modifying pages outside of their domain. A race condition in page updating combined with HTTP redirection may allow JavaScript from one page to modify a redirected page. This could allow cookies and pages to be read or arbitrarily modified. This update addresses the issue by correcting access control to window properties. Credit to Lawrence Lai, Stan Switzer, and Ed Rowe of Adobe Systems, Inc. for reporting this issue.

Impact: Viewing a maliciously crafted web page may lead to arbitrary code execution

Description: Heap buffer overflows exist in the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library used by the JavaScript engine in Safari. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted web page, an attacker may trigger the issue, which may lead to arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation of JavaScript regular expressions. Credit to Charlie Miller and Jake Honoroff of Independent Security Evaluators for reporting these issues.

Impact: Visiting a malicious website may allow cross-site requests

Description: An HTTP injection issue exists in XMLHttpRequest when serializing headers into an HTTP request. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted web page, an attacker could trigger a cross-site scripting issue. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation of header parameters. Credit to Richard Moore of Westpoint Ltd. for reporting this issue.

Impact: Look-alike characters in a URL could be used to masquerade a website

Description: The International Domain Name (IDN) support and Unicode fonts embedded in Safari could be used to create a URL which contains look-alike characters. These could be used in a malicious web site to direct the user to a spoofed site that visually appears to be a legitimate domain. This update addresses the issue by through an improved domain name validity check.

Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution

Description: An invalid type conversion when rendering frame sets could lead to memory corruption. Visiting a maliciously crafted web page may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Credit to Rhys Kidd of Westnet for reporting this issue.

Filed under: Cellphones

Boot up iTunes everybody, the Joz wasn’t kidding when he said the first iPhone update is nigh. Apple just pushed out iPhone update 1.0.1.

[Thanks, BGR]

Update: Ok, updating took about five or six minutes. Noticing anything specifically? Let us know in comments, we’ll list the fixes here (since Apple wasn’t courteous enough to tell us what, exactly, it repaired in the device).

Ah, Apple’s added the fix / changelog. Noice! Just looks like Safari-related security updates. That’s fine and good, now howsabout the constant, mind-popping crashing going on with that app?

Oh, and good news everybody! iFuntastic (v2) still functions with the 1.0.1 update! We tested it, and it worked beautifully.

Also, is it just us or did all these Safari security fixes come along with stability fixes as well? We’ve never seen mobile Safari perform so admirably with eight full ajaxy pages open as we have since loading up 1.0.1.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

We’re not sure why Apple chooses to reveal such juicy tidbits to dry, uptight market analyst types before… oh, say us for example, but be that as it may, it seems Apple’s VP of iPod Product Marketing has spilled some tasty beans in a chat with RBC Capital Markets this week. RBC’s research note indicates that an “iPhone update patch is expected shortly,” while “management expressed excitement at plans to increase iPhone value over time via new software features.” We figure that doesn’t mean that this very first update will fulfill all of our wildest dreams for the iPhone’s true potential, but RBC is speculating that patches will eventually add MMS, Leopard-specific integration of some nature, location-based services, and — naturally — new widgets. We don’t suppose this first update could have something to do with a particular vulnerability, could it?

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Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio

A standalone music download service which Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo hinted at in June is looking to be making its way out into the world sometime this August, according to a recent Fortune article. The mobile phone kingpin appears to be positioning itself as a direct competitor for Apple and iTunes before the iPhone makes its way into European markets sometime later this year. Sources rumor that the “worldwide” service will allow users to download and transfer songs to non-Nokia hardware, but will employ some form of DRM, and Nokia will be offering over a million songs at the outset — a pittance when compared to Apple’s five million and counting. Supposedly, news of the launch will be delivered on August 29th in London during a live music event at the Ministry of Sound. The company has sent out invitations to a mysterious “Go Play” event, which asks invitees to “Come and witness the next stage of the evolution of the internet and mobility,” which we’re pretty sure is code for “the president is announcing the biggest uphill battle ever.”

Read — Can Nokia beat iPhone at its own tunes?
Read — Nokia “Go Play” invite hints heavily towards music download service

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Filed under: Features

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

For all the attention on the love-hate relationship between Apple and Microsoft, there’s another software superpower with which Apple is increasingly butting heads. Apple was an early investor in Adobe and an early supporter of PostScript, which drove the first LaserWriters and launched the desktop publishing market. When Steve Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, that company used Display PostScript as the imaging engine for the company’s black boxes.

Photoshop and other members of Adobe’s Creative Suite remain some of the most popular creative tools on the Mac. For years, Photoshop made cameos at Apple keynotes as the company argued the superiority of the PowerPC architecture.

But the relationship has been strained at times as well. After going on lots of minor quests involving the slaying of forest creatures, Adobe released PostScript Level 2. But Apple surprised nearly everyone when it partnered with Microsoft in 1989 to position TrueType and the now-forgotten TrueImage as a rival to Adobe’s technology. Apple would later try again to surpass Adobe’s font technology with QuickDraw GX before adopting PDF as the graphics lingua franca for Mac OS X.
Adobe, for its part, angered Apple when it, like many leading Mac developers, decided to serve multiple masters and bring its applications to Windows. (Nowadays, though, Apple itself isn’t shy about spreading the ice water around Hell.) And Apple has circled its wagons bringing out pro applications for the Mac such as Final Cut and Aperture that come nervously close to Adobe’s turf.

Amidst these developments in 1993, a startup co-founded by one of the Mac’s earliest third-party developers showed off a product called SmartSketch, later to be renamed FutureSplash Animator. The FutureSplash plug-in enabled Netscape Navigator to display vector graphics and even animations, garnering the attention of Macromedia.

Over time, this plug-in, renamed Flash, gained the ability to display documents and even play back video, powering YouTube and many similar sites. Since Macromedia’s acquisition by Adobe, Flash has become a cornerstone of the Adobe integrated Runtime, a way to move beyond simply playing back content and an emerging development environment for creating cross-platform connected applications. As with PDF, Microsoft’s response has been to compete with a rival initiative called Silverlight. But what about that other PC operating system vendor with the big cat code names?

AIR and Silverlight both run on the Mac (and Silverlight will even run on Linux), but neither run on Apple’s most recent closed devices that use Mac OS X — Apple TV and the iPhone. In fact, neither even supports Flash. Apple’s reluctance to let in a rival development and video platform, though, may be causing it more harm than good.

One could argue that, particularly with Apple’s newcomer status to the world of the carrier-dependent, it wants to err on the side of safety in the case of the iPhone, but Apple TV doesn’t have a similar defense. Because Apple TV and iTunes lack Flash, YouTube is transcoding its entire video library to H.264, Apple’s preferred codec for QuickTime. A lack of support for Flash weakens Apple’s argument that the iPhone does not provide, as its ads claim, “a watered-down version of the Internet.”

Microsoft may be competing with Flash and taking on Adobe on more fronts than Apple, but even Windows Mobile devices can support Flash. Apple is always careful about what it includes in its products but, for the good of its users and ultimately for at least the iPhone itself, it should come to terms with the ubiquity and usefulness of Flash.

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Arguments have surely ensued over the iPhone’s polarizing touchscreen keyboard, and while you just knew it was lurking out there somewhere, the patent application describing the aforementioned device has finally surfaced. Dubbed “Keyboards for Portable Electronic Devices,” the documents outlines an adaptive board with multi-symbol icons, and aside from using it solely on the iPhone, it looks like the technology could be implemented on nearly any handheld gizmo. Of course, the verbiage does mention handset mainstays such as word recommendations and predictive text entry, so it’s hard to believe that all of this stuff is completely Apple’s creation. Regardless, who needs license agreements when you can just hack one for your own good? [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via UnwiredView]

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Filed under: Cellphones

When the time came and your battery died, you were probably thinking you’d have to send your iPhone off to Apple as part of their expensive and complicated battery replacement program — but now you’ve got a sketchy DIY option instead. Once again, a mysterious Chinese company has stepped in and “created” a “solution” to your problem with its iPhone battery replacement kit. For just $20, which is cheap enough to elicit genuine concern, you get a 1400mAh, 3.7V iPhone battery, some type of screwdriver-like tool, a strange plastic shiv, and an instruction manual (presumably in English, but you never know). All you have to do is crack open your $600 phone, de-solder your old battery and solder in the new one… and probably some other, more complicated stuff too. At this price, it seems unlikely that this battery won’t explode, so buy at your own risk, and definitely try at your own risk.

[Via I4U, thanks Luigi]

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New York State’s Consumer Protection Board has raised some complaints about the iPhone’s battery and the phone’s repair and return policies in a letter to Apple, the agency said Monday.

The rechargeable battery must eventually be replaced by Apple Computer Inc., which makes the device, when the battery no longer holds a charge. Apple charges $79 plus $6.95 shipping for the battery replacement after the one-year warranty has expired on the device, which sells for $500 to $600 with a two-year wireless contract with AT&T. (more…)