Juan Pablo Lopez Yacubian has discovered two vulnerabilities in Safari, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct spoofing attacks or potentially compromise a user’s system.

1) An error when downloading e.g. a .ZIP file with an overly long filename can be exploited to cause a memory corruption.

Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.

2) An error in the handling of windows can be exploited to display arbitrary content while showing the URL of a trusted web site in the address bar.

The vulnerabilities are confirmed in version 3.1 for Windows. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution:

Do not browse untrusted web sites.

Source: Secunia

Following my recent upgrade to WordPress 2.5 (RC1) on my other blog/website I could not get my favourite statistic plugins working. The first, WP Slimstat, is no longer under development and is not compatible with WP 2.3 and above. The latter, Popularity Contest, is supposed to work with the latest WP versions but triggered a fatal error during install (at least for me).

At first glance it would appear I’d have to look somewhere else for alternatives. On the other hand I could dive into the code and try figuring things out myself. I decided on the last option.

Fix - Alex King’s Popularity Contest (v.1.3b3)

Fixing the installation error was far easier than anticipated. This is what you need to do if you experience any difficulties or plan on upgrading:

• If you have an older version deactivate the plugin.
• Download the latest release (link above).
• Open popularity-contest.php and scroll down to line 59. Replace

  require('../../wp-blog-header.php');

  with

  require('../wp-blog-header.php');

• Upload the edited file to your plugins folder (sub directory popularity-contest)
• Reactivate the plugin

I tried posting a comment mentioning the problem, but it went into comment heaven. The issue will most likely be solved with the next release (but I couldn’t wait…).

Update: In case you are doing a fresh install you might also need to create the DB tables manually. More about how to do this here.

Update - Camu’s WP Slimstat (v.0.92)

To avoid repeating myself please see my post “How to view and collect visitor statistics” for a proper solution. This tiny update should keep WP Slimstat working until the WordPress team decides on more DB changes. With any luck this might take awhile…

The “IP to Country database” update is not necessary, and will only apply for new log entries. However, to keep the data more or less correct it is probably a wise decision to have the database more up to date.

Feel free to let me know if you have any difficulties running these updates, or know of other plugins you’d liked “fixed”.

The Google employees that make our favourite cool Google services often go unrecognised. But that’s not the case with Google Street Views. In a rare Google display of self-acclaim. the Google Street View team posed in the back of the company’s Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, California in–you guessed it–a Google Street View.

This is how they should sell a Mac

Lately I’ve seen the “Apple Software update” window on my screen rather frequently. It appears that if you’ve installed either Safari, iTunes or Quicktime Apple is trying to push the ones you don’t have installed as well. For those of us happy with other browsers and media players this is starting to get quite annoying.

I know Microsoft’s been doing this for years (try installing Live Messenger and see what happens), but I really don’t like the way things are turning. Imagine downloading Adobe Reader and then get an update option to download all the other products Adobe has to offer (both free and paid).

I assume this is all part of Apple’s marketing strategy. They know a lot of people are using iTunes which is a nice software to sync your iPod. However, this seams to have opened a new door for Apple to force people to download and (hopefully) use their other products, which in the end perhaps would lead to more people converting to a Mac.

To be honest I hate it when the auto-updater gives you options not related to the product you’re using. It’s like Firefox would dump Thunderbird in the same update as Firefox 3. So Apple, please stick with advertising and “normal” marketing, don’t just throw things at people!

What’s your take on this?