Huge security hole in Internet Explorer for MacOS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday October 2, 2001 @10:30AM from the now-thats-really-funny dept.

Brad Lucier writes "Macintouch is reporting (go down the page a bit) that Internet Explorer 5.1, which comes preinstalled on MacOS X 10.1, has a huge security hole---when it downloads arbitrary programs encoded in the Macintosh's standard BinHex (.hqx) format, it automatically executes them. " Well I guess thats one way to make Unix insecure. Can anyone actually confirm this since it looks kinda sketchy. I wonder what someone's rationale would be for that:"Oh this won't hurt anyone, and saving that extra 'OK' click will be great!".

1 of 606 comments (clear)

Near-Useless Security by Giant+Hairy+Spider · 2001-10-02 10:42 · Score: 4, Troll

Most users don't care so much about the system files, which are just a matter of rerunning the install process. Their personal data is far more valuable to them.

Maybe this will save a little data on systems with multiple users, but we're talking about personal computers here. By definition they are primarily used by one person.

The protection offered by an administrator account is minimal.

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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.