This is a follow-on to previous message from my son regarding the
unchecking in preferences of Safari. Chris is normally at UWA but has
been spending the US winter term at Dartmouth for a few years now.
His web file says:
Chris McDonald currently holds the appointments of senior lecturer in
the School of Computer Science & Software Engineering at The University
of Western Australia and adjunct associate professor in the Department
of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Chris is
currently Deputy Head of the School of CSSE, and sharing the
responsibilities of Acting Associate Dean in the Faculty of
Engineering, Computing and Mathematics at UWA.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Chris McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 23 February 2006 12:05:05 AM
To: Laurie McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
There should be no confusion - this is a demonstrated problem (first
noted
over 12months ago it seems), and a few exploits are beginning to
appear.
So don't click on any of the "samples" that people are discussing.
The only confusion should be in how much damage can occur by an evil
person:
- the problem is enabled by default in OS-X
- I don't think it's only a Tiger thing, the mechanism has resided in
OS-X
unchanged for years.
- it is not limited to Safari (where it CAN be disabled)
- it is now known to occur in Mail (no known fix here until Apple
releases a security patch)
- it cannot destroy your operating system, but it can delete all of
your
personal files - photos, email, banking, medical....
_______________________________________________________________________
______
Dr Chris McDonald E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Computer Science W:
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~chris
Dartmouth College, Sudikoff, H6211 T: +603 646 8748
Hanover, NH 03755-3510, USA F: +603 646 1672
Time to do some serious backing-up I would think.
Laurie McDonald #234
