Quicktime 7.6 fixes security flaws

JOBS' MOB released Quicktime 7.6 Wednesday to address seven security vulnerabilities in the fruit-themed toymaker's video player application.

Apple doesn't grade security flaws by severity or divulge whether actual exploits have been detected, but its impact descriptions for the security vulnerabilities all refer to "unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution", suggesting that malicious input could crash Quicktime or potentially compromise the integrity of the user's PC operating system.

The security flaws resolved by the new release include vulnerabilities to maliciously-crafted RTSP URLs and QTVR, AVI, MPEG-2, H.263, Cinepak and Quicktime-encoded movie files.

Quicktime 7.6 is available for Mac OS/X Tiger and Leopard as well as the Vole's Windows XP and Vista. It can be installed via Software Update or from the Apple Downloads page.

Despite the fact that Mac OS/X is BSD Unix beneath Apple's proprietary eye-candy desktop GUI, Apple doesn't offer a Linux version of Quicktime. However, Mplayer for Linux handles Quicktime encoded files. Mplayer for Linux is not implicated by Apple's Quicktime video player security flaws. µ

L'Inq
Apple