Apple just launched the new Mac OS X “Lion” and it will be releasing an update to fix some problems and three security issues. There was an update released in order to help users prepare their Macs for the new update and the new patch is actually to fix those issues. The update comes in two forms and depends on whether the user patched the first time or not. The update is identified as Mac OS 10.6.8. The 10.6.8 update enhanced the Mac App Store to get the Mac’s ready for the new Lion operating system.
Some of the minor issues that have been reported included causing printers to pause during print jobs and caused the audio to fail on some systems when connected via HDMI or optical audio cables. Users that have already updated with the original 10.6.8 update need to re-patch with the 10.6.8 Supplemental Update. Apple says that if a user did not update with the original, the new 1.09GB update called Mac OS X 10.6.8 Combo Update v1.1 is much cleaner and takes care of issues from both updates.
At the same time Apple was updating their Lion OS, they had to work on security fixes for iWork office suite that surfaced from the ’09 version. The security fixes were applied to “Numbers” and “Pages” which were reported as vulnerable to exploits using booby-trapped documents. Security updates are generally more important but Apple waited for the operating system update to fix these as well. In addition to the iWork fix, Apple had to roll out an update that fixed a security flaw on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The issue that was fixed had to do with a possible interception of SSL connections from Apple’s mobile devices. Verizon iPhone users will see the update as iOS 4.2.10.
Even after all of those updates, Apple was not done and also fixed some issues with a major update for Safari 5.0.6 ad 5.1. The update for Safari fixed a number of security issues and the number was not small according to Andrew Storms, the director of security operations for nCircle. Storms said that the number of updates was “mind boggling”. He went on to say that this was a large, “number of bugs for just Safari alone. There are so many code-execution bugs alone I’ve gone cross-eyed.” The update fixes over 45 bugs that were found in Safari that could lead to remote-execution.
