Apple issues fifth major security update of this year for Mac OS X

Apple issues fifth major security update of this year for Mac OS X

Apple Inc has issued their latest round of updates for their Mac OS X operating system product. This is the first such update this year from the company.

Apple said that these latest patches would fix 17 vulnerabilities. However, the good thing is that just around a third of these vulnerabilities are serious enough to allow hackers to inject their own code into a compromised system.

One of the patches fixes a bug related to how the operating system handles PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Apple said in the advisory: “By enticing a user to open a maliciously crafted PDF file, an attacker could trigger the overflow which may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.”

Another patch is for a serious flaw in the Apple’s instant messaging service and software iChat. Some other patches fix issues in BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain), DNS (Domain Name System) server software, Ruby CGI library and fetchmail.

The patches are available as a manual download. Apple owners can also run the application’s built in security update mechanism.