NEWS
The first bugs have already been found in the beta version of Safari for Windows, a port of Apple's web browser, less than a day after its release.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the beta release during his keynote speech at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.
David Maynor - one of the researchers who controversially claimed to have found security flaws in Apple's AirPort wi-fi driver last year - wrote in his blog on Monday that "an afternoon of idle fuzzing [testing software by throwing random data at its inputs]" by him and other testers had thrown up six denial-of-service (DoS) bugs and two remote execution flaws.
Maynor, who works for consultancy Errata Security, added that, in line with his company's disclosure policy, he would not report the bugs to Apple.
This stance prompted one reader of his blog to comment: "If you actually desire to be professional, then either shut your damned trap entirely or report the issues the way a professional security researcher would report them... for the betterment of all good folks and not just you."
Maynor responded by questioning what he termed "the value in reporting vulnerabilities to an organisation that treats them as marketing fodder and requires press to fix anything serious in a timely fashion".
In August 2006 Maynor and his colleague Jon Ellch used a Black Hat security event in Las Vegas to demonstrate a successful hack on an Apple MacBook. Although Apple claimed the research was no evidence of a MacBook vulnerability, the company released three security patches for AirPort just over a month later.
Apple could not be reached for comment at the time of writing.
David Meyer writes for ZDNet UK.
Comments
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1. anonymous
IT IS A BETA
2. anonymous
Not yet a Beta - might be when it grows up!
3. anonymous
What a spiteful little busybody!
4. Beta Bug
What? No sh*t. Bugs in beta!
And while we are at it.
Warning! Peanut butter. Contains nuts.
5. anonymous
Tried it yesterday and was very disapointed with the lack of usability - even for a beta.
I would expect beta's to have minor bugs, I would also expect it to work to some extent though.
6. anonymous
Works for less than 10 seconds...PRE beta at best...Back to FireFox...Even Apple's demo video gives little incentive to learn Safari. Crashed 3x...Even a complete reinstall gave the same results. Why put something out that has even more bugs than a typical piece of PC software????
7. Richard A
Proof, then, that writing stable, bug-free apps for the Windows environment is always much harder than it is for the inherently stable and secure Unix / OS X environment...?
;-)
8. Jeremy Wickins
Have to agree with the comments here - it is a most unprofessional way to behave. If you find a bug, report it - it costs nothing, and hurts no-one.
However, I am also in agreement that it is not what I would refer to as Beta, after trying it for just over 24 hours - a Beta doesn't usually fall over after being asked to do something routine (change homepage). At best pre-Beta, but more like an Alpha! I'm sticking with Firefox and Opera for now.