MacRumors.com

Note: This is a Page 2 News Item

Security company Secunia reports that a new vulnerability in the way Mac OS X handles the "fpathconf()" system call has been discovered.

The vulnerability exists due to an error in the "fpathconf()" syscall when it is called with an unsupported file type and can be exploited to cause a system panic.

The vulnerability was initially found in FreeBSD and was discovered in the latest version of 10.4.8 (with all patches applied) by Ilja Van Sprundel. The severity of the vulnerability is rated as "not critical," although a patch from Apple is not yet available. It is not currently known whether other systems (10.3.x, etc) are effected.

Recently, another Mac OS X concept virus was developed, code named OSX.Macarena. Similarly deemed "not critical", the virus is not known to be in the wild on more than 50 computers worldwide or at more than 2 sites (according to Symantec).