“A vulnerability in Apple’s Mac OS X results in a potential situation in which a malicious person could execute arbitrary commands on your machine, such as deleting your home directory, or doing other harmful actions. This vulnerability involves the use of URL ‘schemes.’ These are the part of a web address that specifies what program should be used to handle the address,” Unsanity.com reports.
“Paranoid Android can protect you from this potential vulnerability until Apple makes an official fix available. It does this by watching the URL schemes that are requested and delaying them until you’ve had a chance to say whether you’d like to proceed or not. If you know that the url that’s being loaded is legit, go ahead, but if it looks suspicious, Paranoid Android gives you an opportunity to cancel it,” Unsanity.com reports. “Paranoid Android is completely free – we do this for the benefit of Mac community. You can check out our other products too.”
Version 1.1 (May 22, 2004)
– Protected applications now appear in the APE Manager preference pane under Enhanced Applications.
– Added support for Jaguar.
– Added more permitted URL schemes. The permitted schemes are ‘http’, ‘https’, ‘ftp’, ‘mailto’, ‘itms’, ‘addressbook’, ‘rtsp’, ‘pnm’, ‘ical’, ‘webcal’, ‘sherlock’, ‘guikit’, and ‘file’.
More info and download link here.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Unsanity releases free utility to fix Mac OS X ‘URL Schemes’ vulnerability – May 20, 2004
Good work Unsanity! Thanks! (nah… I won’t mention that this is the first post, I hate it when others do that…)
For more information on this, here’s John Gruber’s take on why you shouldn’t use Paranoid Android, and why RCDefaultApp is the better solution:
http://daringfireball.net/2004/05/help_viewer_security_update
http://daringfireball.net/2004/05/unsafe_uri_handlers
First, since the dawn of time, always be wary of unsolicited packages. Whether it be a flaming bag o’ poop on your front porch or a data package sent from far away lands, be very cautious.
I see no need to go into a panic and go scrambling for a solution from a company I know nothing about! Apple has always been incredible with their security solutions. I’ll wait for them, rather some upstart “security” company trying to make a name for itself by generating unnecessary fear.
If you’re really in a panic over this, do what you’ve always done; head down to your Apple store and chat with the Genius at the bar.
Geez, people, lighten up. The sky ain’t fallin’!!
I like the John Gruber fix better. It does not inject code and can be set back easily to the way it was before later. Of course what I really want is the official fix from Apple but until then…..
Didnt Apple already release the patch yesterday?
Glad to see RCDefaultApp is being popularized by John Gruber, finally.
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RCEnvironment is also nice.
As usful as some of ’em are I’m resisting installing APEs/haxies on my new eMac.
Did you read the pages on Gruber’s site, Red Wings?
Yes Apple did release it yesterday for 10.2.8 and 10.3.3.
http://www.apple.com/support/