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Apple Safari On Windows Broken On First Day
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jun 11, 2007 10:57 PM
from the bigger-they-come dept.
from the bigger-they-come dept.
An anonymous reader writes "David Maynor, infamous for the Apple Wi-Fi hack, has discovered bugs in the Windows version of Safari mere hours after it was released. He notes in the blog that his company does not report vulnerabilities to Apple. His claimed catch for 'an afternoon of idle futzing': 4 DoS bugs and 2 remote execution vulnerabilities." Separately, within 2 hours Thor Larholm found a URL protocol handler command injection vulnerability that allows remote command execution.
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Safari on Windows, Leopard Debut at WWDC 850 comments
comm2k writes to mention that Apple has announced a Windows version of Safari along with Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X at this years World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. "He said Safari was 'the fastest browser on Windows', saying it was twice as fast as Internet Explorer. A test version of Safari for Windows XP and for Vista is available for download from the Apple website. Apple is hoping to replicate the success of iTunes, which has proved enormously popular on both Macs and Windows machines."
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Maybe that's because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe that's because... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quicktime that's the absolute mess -- It's gotten better since iTunes came along, but compared to the lightweight framework that it is on the mac, the windows version absolutely sucks. It's just an incredibly sluggish, and somewhat useless media player.
On OS X, Quicktime is essentially a fairly versatile media framework that, given the proper codec, can play just about anything. Virtually all mac applications that require the manipulation of media files utilize it. The file format also allows for some pretty darn cool nondestructive editing -- Final Cut Pro is more or less just a fancy utility for manipulating QuickTime files.
QuickTime player is simply a front-end application that makes use of the framework. Its Windows counterpart is a mere shadow of its former self.
On the other hand, VLC natively plays every format under the sun on every platform under the sun. Come to think of it, it's the only app I know of that works extremely well on all 3 major platforms (Firefox isn't so hot on the mac)
Many people blame the presence of a Windows version for preventing Apple from transitioning iTunes over to a Cocoa app. I can hardly blame them either -- Cocoa apps tend to be a bit more stable and 'snappy' (it's a really nice framework)
I wouldn't completely knock Safari without giving it a chance. Safari itself was based off of KHTML (and the Apple devs still contribute back regularly to the KDE/Konqueror folks). If they ported it once, porting it twice shouldn't be a terribly huge issue once the initial kinks are worked out.
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Re:Maybe that's because... (Score:5, Insightful)
David Maynor has a track record as a publicity whore first and legitimate security researcher second, so whether Maynor has actually found as many bugs as he claims to have found here is up for debate until he provides some more substantial proof. He also has a giant ax to grind after Apple embarrassed him in the AirPort bug fiasco. I'd take anything he says with a grain of salt until he gives me ample reason to trust him again.
Nice policy, by the way: find bugs and don't ever report them to Apple. Because last time you claimed to have reported a bug, Apple exposed you as a liar, so now you just don't bother. That's brilliant. We need more people in the world with that kind of attitude. And Maynor wonders why people don't take him seriously as a "security researcher". The Blogspot-based announcement doesn't help either. That's like your company e-mail address being @hotmail.com.
Thor Larholm, on the other hand, may well have found a legitimate bug. What with this being beta software and all, that's not too incredibly surprising. Equally serious bugs have been found in release versions of Firefox and IE, so I'm not sure what the big deal is here. If Safari 3 ships with these vulnerabilities still unfixed, then people should worry.
p
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Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Who would've thought it!
Incidentally, it doesn't seem to like authenticating proxies at all, so my first experience with it was a bug too
However, making a big deal of, but not reporting bugs found in a beta release of something seems more than a little silly.
Bugs found in beta software, news at 11 (Score:5, Funny)
It is assumed Apple realized this devastating "beta" because they hate freedom and want the terrorists to win... and they've now won.
We will try to stay on top of this developing critical story.
My god have mercy on us all.
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yes, safari is faster! (Score:5, Funny)
Alpha or Beta? (Score:5, Informative)
The installation was smooth without any unexpected bumps on the road. First when I loaded the program, I noticed that no menu fonts nor any fonts whatsoever on the web pages existed. To make it worse, the browser would crash every time I clicked on anything with interactivity, such as the stop button. I have read quite a few solutions to this problem but so far no success. I run Win XP SP2, btw.
Anyway, there are more problems around the corner. According to the Apple forum, people can't play Windows Media files, dual monitor support is very buggy, some buttons screw up the GUI when pressed down and dragged, loads of spontaneous lockups, random letters appearing everywhere, installation problems, parental control issues and more. [apple.com]
Also, I am not a big fan of customized GUI:s for crucial applications like a web browser. We should be able to use Windows ClearType instead of the ported OSX version (which sucks), and most importantly, we should be able to use the standard Windows themes. I don't get why Apple thinks the average Windows user would want a significantly altered browser that looks nothing like the rest of the operating system he or she is using. How would Mac users react if Internet Explorer was ported with the Windows theme?
I think it looks like a promising project, but I am worried because it's not in Apple's nature to release beta software with so many bugs and so little heart put into it.
So many keep saying "but it's a BETA" (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on. You have to admit remote execution of any cmd is pretty bad even for a beta. This ain't your run of the mill bug, like a UI glitch or rendering type of bug. It makes the beta unusable and thus not a very useful beta. (Unless you're testing how your own trusted website looks under Safari.)
Maybe I need a tinfoil hat... (Score:5, Insightful)
... but the first thing that I thought of was that here you have an app (Safari) that works perfectly fine on Macs; as soon as it gets ported to Windows, BAM, instantly full of vulnerabilities. Would Apple go so far as to break their own product to deface an opponent in the OS arena?
Aikon-
I can see the ads now... (Score:5, Funny)
PC:
Mac is looking through a small viewfinder, looking very absorbed
PC: Hey Mac.
Mac: Yeah?
PC: What are you doing?
Mac: I'm browsing the internet with Safari.
PC: I do the same thing with IE.
Mac: You should try Safari. It's fast, secure, and easy to use.
Mac hands the viewfinder to PC
PC: Oh, thanks.
PC looks into the viewfinder and keels over, dead
Mac shrugs
Parent
Safari or Windows vuls? (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, Firefox had that "URL protocol handler command injection" vulnerability (or something around those lines, correct me if I'm wrong) a few years ago and FF developers said it was the way Windows handles protocols. In the end, they had to change the way URLs are handled inside FF to prevent Windows from catching it.
From here @ WWDC... (Score:5, Interesting)
The vibe amongst the attendees is a weird mix of disbelief and bewilderment. Safari for Windows was not the big deal Steve was hoping it would be. In fact, most of the conversations I've overheard are pretty critical of this direction.
I don't think Apple is serious about competing for market share against FF or IE on Windows. I think they're offering the development platform based on Webkit so that web developers can make sure their code looks OK on the iPhone. Webkit-iness seems to be the only development platform for iPhone Apps.
Or, maybe Steve is starting to drink his own Kool-Aid.
Re:He notes in the blog that his company does not (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand not sitting on a vulnerability -- there are some valid points both for and against full disclosure -- but not notifying the company at all? WTF.
This is the sort of stuff that just makes the whole IT security industry, and everyone involved in it, look dangerous and irresponsible.
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telling Apple would be insane (Score:5, Funny)
*euros
*credit card numbers
*yuan
*underage virgins
*dollars
*shekels
*death to your enemies
*rubles
*pounds, British money
*pounds, crack cocaine
Just be sure to not rip off the buyer. Most of the buyers have nasty ways to kill you. Some of them have polonium. Some of them have penis pills.
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Re:He notes in the blog that his company does not (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we try it this way:
Maynor claims to be a professional security researcher. One of the cornerstones of professionalism in that field is responsible disclosure of discovered vulnerabilities. Another is full disclosure of vulnerability details after a vendor has had a reasonable amount of time to correct the vulnerability. Yet another is working to advance the overall state of computer security. But Maynor has a track record of irresponsible, partial-at-best disclosure: he claims discovery of vulnerabilities while proclaiming that he will not report them to the vendor, and strives to hide the details of his discoveries from open review by his peers in the security community (for example, witness the endless controversy over the alleged MacBook wifi hack, all of which could have been settled quickly and objectively by simple peer review of the exploit he claimed to have used). And none of this can, so far as I can see, be construed as advancing the state of computer security in any fashion.
In other words, there is no sense of the word "professionalism" for his field which seems to be reasonably applicable to Maynor. Before you go screaming "ad hominem" or "Apple Fanboi", take note of two things:
I await your reply.
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Re:He notes in the blog that his company does not (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible that the stack failure is in (KHTML/KJS)/WebKit - but as it's not been shown that these bugs apply to either Konqueror or Mac Safari, it's most unlikely that the stack failures are the result of the open portion of the code.
Anyway, as a news story, this is a null set; it's a public beta. It's there for the public to test it and report bugs. It's not a production browser.
I'd be curious, however, to see if these bugs are Windows-only (for example, Mac OS-X and KDE have a URL handling scheme built into the OS that wouldn't be available in Windows; it would need to be implemented as part of Win Safari), or if they apply equally to Windows and Mac.
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Interesting)
The main thing is how the URL handling works, under Windows Safari passes the URL to the Windows URL handler, which just finds the application and then dumps the rest on the command line, which gives many remote execution issues. Under MacOS the MacOS URL handler finds the application, and then dispatches an OpenURL AppleEvent (I think, similar to that anyway) towards the application, which then has the responsibility of parsing and loading the URL.
I'm guessing that the engineers didn't look too hard at how the OS deals with URLs and just assumed it would be safe.
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Interesting)
I, like a lot of other web developers out there, wanted Safari for the purpose of adapting web pages to Yet Another Popular Browser's bugs.
So, what did I find when I downloaded Safari? The ridiculously useful debug menu was gone!
Now, all the docs on how to enable it are for Safari on the Mac, understandbly. What to do?
Kill Safari
Open C:\documents and Settings\[You]\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari\Preferences.plist
Add, in what appears to be the logical place: IncludeDebugMenu1
Load Safari. Now developer-useful things like the Javascript Console are available to you.
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the responsibility they undertake, yes. They may or may not understand all the ins and outs, but it's their responsibility.
Based on the blog posting, they STILL don't know what's "in for them," since the vulnerabilities are still undisclosed. They remain in Maynor's to do list, for sale to the highest bidder for all we know.
If you're a linux or MS supporter, don't waste your breath defending this guy. He wasted a year of everybody's time on that Airport vulnerability that didn't exist.
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you're installing a beta then yes, you really should be aware that you're in for some bugs. It's very unfortunate that Google has diluted the meaning of "beta" so much.
Also note that he's not really failing to report a bug to Apple, he's failing to report it to the webkit/khtml open source project. I doubt very much the bugs are in Apple's closed source GUI front end to webkit.
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Re:shooting the messenger is now + 5 insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say there's something built atop an open source library. Hey, there's plenty of them out there... let's pick OpenSSL as an example. It's open source and it's used in other projects, some of which are commercial or proprietary systems. Now assume that some company makes a proprietary, closed product built on that project as the core, but continue to contribute changes -- a heck of a lot of changes -- back to the original project as the develop. And then they release this as a beta.
Finally, let's say that someone finds a vulnerability in the proprietary project, a security issue with implications for the open source project. And instead of reporting the vulnerability to the proprietary folks (who would probably promptly generate a patch for both their tool and the underlying library, the person refuses to report the vulnerability to anyone and just says 'I found vulnerabilities, but I'm not telling you what they are.'
That's basically how WebKit/KHTML and Safari are tied together. Safari's just a UI atop an open source framework, WebKit, which Apple is the primary contributor to but which other people also contribute to, and which other projects (besides Safari and OS X) use. WebKit is used on Symbian OS, on Linux, and various other operating systems. And this guy is claiming to have found vulnerabilities which, given where they occur, seem to have implications for WebKit as well as Safari... and is refusing to give the details to either Apple, or to the WebKit development community.
You don't have to be an Apple 'fanboi' (or fangirl) to see that's not the way to handle security disclosures. If someone found several bugs in Firefox and said 'ZOMG I can crash Firefox or anything which uses the Gecko HTML engine. I can do it 100% of the time. But I'm not going to report the details to the Firefox team, so, nyah!' people would be up in arms about it.
Professional, good security researchers report things to the responsible parties, giving them the details necessary to fix it. Going, "Ha ha, I found a way to break your stuff but I'm not going to tell you how" is not only unprofessional, it's just downright immature.
Sure, lambaste Apple for releasing a beta/preview of something with bugs if you feel you must. But, please, don't bother trying to defend someone who basically makes a mockery of the entire security field.
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Re:He notes in the blog that his company does not (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the disclosure policy?
Keeping with our disclosure policy, we do not report bugs to Apple.
It doesn't say
Keeping with our disclosure policy, we do not wait for a response to the bugs we report.
If it said that, your comment would make sense. That would be something like
Do you have a better explanation, or a justification for that approach?
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