Apple Plugs Bugs in QuickTime, iTunes

June 3rd, 2009

Apple has issued patches for its QuickTime and iTunes software. The patches fix critical vulnerabilities and a bug that was partially revealed in a book, The Mac Hacker’s Handbook, by Charlie Miller and Dino Dai Zovi, released in March.In all, the updates fix 10 QuickTime vulnerabilities and one bug in iTunes. The flaws affect Windows and Mac users alike. The patches came bundled in the QuickTime 7.6.2 and iTunes 8.2 releases Apple published on Monday.

According to security researchers, most of the flaws were not yet known before Monday. Attackers would have to craft new exploits to target unpatched machines in order to cause damage, but plenty of damage could be done if an attacker were to succeed in exploiting one of the security flaws.

“If left unpatched, the security holes could be exploited by hackers who could create a booby-trapped movie or audio file, programmed to execute malicious code on computers,” said Graham Cluley, a senior security consultant at Sophos.

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