A high critical zero day vulnerability for Apple’s web browser, Safari, was discovered by Krystian Kloskowski and Vin Lisciandro and published last week by Secunia.
The security issue affects current version of Safari (v. 4.0.5) for Microsoft Windows (confirmed) and probably for Mac. Earlier versions of Safari might also be vulnerable. Successful exploitation of the issue leads to remote code execution or exposure of victim’s private data. Secunia has released advisory SA39670, which explains that the flaw exists because of ‘a use-after-free error when handling pop-up boxes created from a child window’ which can result in a function call using an invalid pointer. It is also stated that it ‘can be exploited to execute arbitrary code when a user visits a specially crafted web page’. Another issue mentioned is that Safari includes HTTP basic authentication credentials in an HTTP request if a web page that requires HTTP basic authentication redirects to a different domain (e.g. via a “Location” header).
