Open Letter to my Dad: OS X security concern

Hey Dad,

Well I told you I'd let you know when you need to worry about virus scanning on OS X and I don't think that day has come but I wanted to share a concern with you. Right now there's a security vunerability in OS X Safari that makes me wonder how much longer before we should take action.

If you care to read the article Apple Safari Browser Automatically Executes Shell Scripts feel free. In short, you click a link and it opens a process that could delete all your data. There is some disagreement about the scope of this issue but it seems just that clear to me.

The risk can be somewhat mitigated by opening the Safari Preferences panel and on the General tab, be sure the option to Open "Safe" Files After Downloading is turned off. Safari will no longer open the files automatically, but we still need to be concerned about opening the file manually after the download completes.

Hopefully Apple will release a patch soon for this, but it's not clear just what they can do to make it a lot better. Bottom line: I'm not advising any third-party solution yet but it makes me nervous enough I wanted to pass the word (and mark the date).

Open Letter to my Dad: OS X security concern

Tuesday, Feb 21 at 11:47 AM