QuickTime Gets A Bodyguard
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Apple must be getting very upset that so many attacks are being made on systems through its Quicktime software. Multimedia files are being targeted by the creators of havoc more and more.
So with the latest revision of Quicktime, Apple has taken some of the techniques that Microsoft has employed with Vista to impede the progress of malware. QuickTime now supports ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization), stack checking and hardware NX support (only on Windows Vista). This means that Microsoft can also claim that Vista is superior in one more application, as it doesn’t appear this will come to XP revisions of the product.
The ASLR moves code to different spots in memory each time the program is executed, thereby making it harder to attack certain portions of code. The NX support is a way of checking to see that data areas of memory contain only data and not executing code.
At this time the OS X binaries will not get quite the same level of protection either. OS X, by its heritage, is harder to hack, and so not as much individual armor is needed with each process.
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Quote of the day:
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done. - Andy Rooney
Tags: apple, quicktime, vista, vulnerabilities