Security Update 2003-08-14 Released

Delta-9 writes "Today, Apple released Security Update 2003-08-14, which 'addresses a potential vulnerability in the fb_realpath() function which could allow a local or remote user to gain unauthorized root privileges to a system.'" It's on Software Update, and will likely soon appear on the support downloads page.

Comments

Good work Apple

[wyvern5]

Nice to see Apple is responding more quickly to security problems. I didn't even hear about this through my regular channels until after I had seen the update in Software Update.

Re:Reboot Reqired (sigh)

[mkldev]

I tend to ignore the request to reboot and simply force-quit the installer, then continue working until it is convenient to reboot (which may or may not be that day). The only exception is when I'm installing a new device driver. To make the device driver usable, I do a "sudo kill -HUP xxx" where xxx is the PID of kextd.

In the case of a security update that changes libraries, though, it's prudent to reboot, or at least shut down any daemon processes and restart them.... Anything newly launched will be bound to the new library, but anything already running will continue using the old one, hence any program that uses the buggy function needs to be restarted. A reboot is certainly the easiest way. :-)